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 Speaker: Dr. Prameet Sheth, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, ���ϳԹ���Դ

Title: “Sources of Multidrug Resistant Organisms – Throwing Everything at it Including the Kitchen Sink!”

Bio: Dr. Prameet Sheth is a Clinical Microbiologist at Kingston Health Sciences Centre (Kingston General Hospital) and the Director of Molecular Microbiology. In his role at KHSC, he oversees all the microbiological testing for patients that present to KGH and surrounding hospitals. He is also a Researcher and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology & Molecular Medicine and Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at ���ϳԹ���Դ. Over the last five years he has developed a research program that is interested in infectious diseases. He has a MSc in Hematology from McMaster University and a PhD in HIV Immunology from the University of Toronto. He completed a Fellowship in Medical Microbiology and Bacteriology at the University of Toronto.

Flushed Intelligence- Detecting outbreaks using wastewater-based epidemiology 

• Stephen Brown, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies
• , Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, ���ϳԹ���Դ
• , Associate Director Education and Outreach, Beaty Water Research Centre, Adjunct Professor, Department of Civil Engineering & School of Environmental Studies, Queen's University 

Since the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was identified in late 2019, it has spread worldwide, infecting over 96 million individuals and resulting in over 2 million deaths, with numbers continuing to grow. Although the respiratory route is the primary transmission pathway of concern, SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in stool of infected individuals as well as in individuals where the illness has resolved, and the virus is no longer detectable in respiratory specimens. Accordingly, feces of COVID-19 infected patients may serve as a source of contamination or infection as well as a potential mechanism for community surveillance, including for asymptomatic carriers. Environmental surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in municipal sewage could act as an early warning system of outbreaks as well as identify high-risk communities (e.g. campus residents, correctional institutions, etc.), providing vital monitoring and predictive tools for early intervention in future waves of the COVID-19 outbreak. Community surveillance initiatives worldwide have already begun to demonstrate the ability to detect SARS-CoV-2 in raw sewage, even in low prevalence settings, and suggests that the quantification of the virus in wastewater provides the ability to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19 infections in the community. However, wastewater sample preparation and analysis methods require further development and validation. 

In this seminar, Beaty Water Research Centre (BWRC) affiliated faculty Drs. Stephen Brown (Chemistry & Environmental Studies), Sarah Jane Payne (Civil Engineering) and Geof Hall (Civil Engineering & Environmental Studies), will review the work and progress of others in this field, with a special focus on research groups in Ontario. They will discuss the work in progress at ���ϳԹ���Դ (funded by the Ministry of the Environment Conservation and Parks) to establish a laboratory at the BWRC for validated testing of sewage water samples for SARS-CoV-2 as first step in Kingston to establishing sentinel surveillance system for COVID-19, which can also be applied to inevitable future viral outbreaks across Canada. 

Speaker: Dr. Graeme Howe, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Chemistry, ���ϳԹ���Դ

Title: Fundamental enzymology as a driving force for sustainable biocatalysis

Abstract: Enzymes are the proteinaceous catalysts developed by billions of years of evolution that accelerate chemical reactions into the realm of biological significance. The efficiency of these catalysts is astounding, with enzymes often requiring milliseconds to catalyze reactions that can otherwise require thousands of years. Given their efficiency and negligible environmental impact, enzymes are attractive alternatives to more traditional synthetic transformations that offer the possibility of a sustainable chemical industry. While protein engineering through directed evolution permits the development of efficient enzymes for industrially important xenobiotic chemical reactions, the precise mechanisms by which this technique converts one biocatalyst into another remain entirely unclear. This presentation will detail our efforts to shine a light on the ‘black box’ of directed evolution through the combined use of kinetic isotope effects and quantum mechanical calculations. These techniques permit the characterization of enzyme-catalyzed transition states and offer extremely detailed information about the mechanisms of catalysis. By elucidating how these transition states and the broader enzyme mechanisms are altered over the course of directed evolution, this work will provide fundamental insights into the source of enzymatic catalysis, as well as the features that are required for the development of new biocatalysts. These insights will allow enzyme engineers to progress from current unguided ‘blind’ applications of directed evolution towards semi-rational engineering efforts that reduce the time and costs associated with the repetitious cycles of mutagenesis and screening required for the development of useful biocatalysts. Ongoing efforts in our lab to engineer truly sustainable biocatalysts for industrial applications will also be detailed.

Bio: Graeme received his Hon. B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Toronto. After graduation, Graeme remained in Toronto and carried out his doctoral studies with Prof. Ronald Kluger, studying the mechanisms of decarboxylation of vitamin B₁-derived intermediates and aromatic acids. After receiving his doctorate in 2016, Graeme traveled south of the border to study enzyme mechanisms under the supervision of Prof. Wilfred van der Donk at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow. Graeme began his independent career in the Department of Chemistry at ���ϳԹ���Դ in July of 2019. His research program is focused on understanding how enzymes evolve and the engineering of enzymes into new and improved biocatalysts.