Holyoak Structural Enzymology Lab

Dr. Holyoak is an expert in structural biology and enzymology with over 20 years of experience as an academic scientist. He has held professorial positions at both Canadian and American universities and has led many academic and industrial collaborations. His research program aims to understand how proteins function at an atomic level, focusing on small molecule-, peptide-, and protein-protein interactions with a particular interest in how the conformational flexibility of enzymes regulates their selectivity and catalytic function.

Anna earned her BSc in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Waterloo. She is currently a Ph.D student in the Holyoak Lab studying a family of uncharacterized enzymes produced from species in the Bacteroides genus to understand their role in the gut microbiome.

Fatma did her undergraduate studies in Biochemistry and MSc in Biomedical Chemistry in Egypt. In her master thesis, she synthesized 30 novel peptide derivatives, characterized them using spectroscopic analysis (IR, proton NMR, mass spectometry), and investigated their anti-cancer activities on 5 different cell lines using MTT growth inhibition assays. She started her PhD work in the Holyoak Lab focusing on the function and inhibition of the main protease of SARS-CoV-2.

Sam earned his BSc in Biology from the University of Waterloo in 2023, with a specialization in Microbiology. Currently a MSc student in the Holyoak Lab, he is interested in enzymology and aims to unravel the mechanisms associated with clinically significant enzymes, with a particular emphasis on proteases. Sam is currently working on understanding the structure-function relationships of the main protease of SARS-CoV-2 and how oxidative stress changes enzyme function.

Shauhin Yazdani earned his BSc in Biochemistry with a specialization in Bioinformatics from the University of Waterloo in 2024. He first joined the lab as a senior thesis student, working on the expression of CTP synthase. He returned in Fall 2024 as a Master’s student, now investigating the structural biology of Clostridioides difficile NimB, a protein implicated in antibiotic resistance. His research aims to uncover the mechanism of CdNimB activity.

Dr. Tanner’s work as a part of the Dmitrienko group aims to address the ongoing concern of antimicrobial resistance through the testing of novel antibiotics, inhibitors of resistance enzymes, and improvement of current assay methods and reagents. Her particular focus is on combating carbapenem resistance in Gram-negative bacteria caused by the expression of serine- and metallo-β-lactamases with broad substrate specificity such as CTX-M-15 and NDM-1.