Most operating grants cover the costs of hiring graduate students, purchasing lab consumables and disseminating research results, but are rarely large enough to allow researchers to acquire or replace much-needed equipment. The NSERC Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) grants program is designed to help university researchers in the natural sciences and engineering obtain research equipment. Despite being very competitive, Faculty of Science professors have done remarkably well in obtaining RTI grants. The following professors received this coveted funding in 2021 to add cutting-edge equipment to their labs.
Professors Christopher Boddy and Jeffrey Keillor received RTI funding to replace their solid phase peptide synthesizer. The Boddy lab uses this equipment to characterize natural product biosynthetic pathways, and study DNA-binding hydrocarbon stapled peptides. The equipment will also enable the Keillor lab to pursue their research on the chemical biology of transglutaminases, as it makes it possible for them to develop peptide-based enzyme substrates and inhibitors, as well as novel probes for protein labelling.