Brandon Findlay Email & Phone Number

Edmonton, Ab, Ca

Montreal, Canada Area

Bacteria live in a rich milieu, surrounded by both friends and foes. Understanding how bacteria adapt to their environment (and make the environment itself more hospitable) gives us a better picture of what goes on in the microbial world, with exciting applications to medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology.Research in the Findlay lab is interdisciplinary, encompassing the fields of biochemistry, microbiology, chemical spectroscopy (especially NMR and mass spectroscopy), and natural product chemistry.

Edmonton, Canada Area

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Vederas Lab. My research is divided into two themes; in the first I investigate the mode of action of tridecaptins, a family of short cationic antimicrobial peptides that display species specific activity against Gram negative bacteria, including human pathogens. Similar to polymyxins but lacking the macrocyclic ring, tridecaptins do not act non-specifically with the membrane, and do not bind to LPS. Early results suggest these peptides interact with Lipid II, but the effect of this interaction on bacterial growth is not well understood.The other thrust of my research is the total synthesis of crocin, the glycosyl caretenoid that gives saffron its vivid colour. Used in cooking and traditional medicine for over three thousand years, crocin has a host of biological activities, from anticancer effects to a protective role in multiple sclerosis. Unfortunately, few analogues of crocin exist, and there is no firm understanding of the structural features behind its biological activity.

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs) are produced by plants, animals and bacteria to protect their host against antagonistic microbes. The antitheses of selective antibiotics, these peptides are drawn by electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions to targets as diverse as the bacterial membrane, nucleic acids and serum proteins. This lack of specificity is their greatest strength, as mutations to single genes rarely lead to bacterial resistance. Resistance may be conferred by large scale alterations in cell envelope composition, which generally reduces bacterial fitness in the absence of peptide.Clinical applications of natural CAMPs are limited, as the peptides are toxic to mammalian cells and rapidly inactivated in vivo by serum albumin and proteases. Faced with these challenges we have prepared a number of CAMP analogues, with the goal of creating lead compounds for further development of antibacterial therapeutics. Much of my work focused on ultrashort lipopeptides and lipopeptoids, which have properties similar to natural CAMPs and extremely abbreviated sequences. The simple structure of these scaffolds allows rapid creation of CAMP analogues in a brief period of time, allowing us to rapidly explore the structural requirements for CAMP activity. The balance of this work focuses on imparting CAMP-like behaviour to known antibiotics, in order to expand their spectrum of susceptible bacteria and combat the development of drug-resistant bacteria. In particular, the aminoglycosides neomycin and tobramycin have been fused to phenolic disinfectants such as triclosan and biclotymol, in order to improve their diffusion across the bacterial envelope and activity against Gram-negative bacteria.

Burnaby, Canada

As an honour's project student I investigated the structure of the bacterial membrane protein YidC. Specifically, I amplified DNA coding for several homologues of the periplasmic domain of this protein into E. coli, expressed and purified the resulting protein, and screened the peptides against conditions where crystallization was likely to occur. YidC plays a key role in the Sec-independent insertion of proteins into the bacterial membrane, and at the time the structural basis of its function was not known.

Burnaby, British Columbia

I spent a summer research term in the Wilson lab, working towards the synthesis of Ceratamines A and B. Originally isolated from a marine sponge near Papua New Guinea, these alkaloids are potent microtubule stabilizing agents, with a binding site distinct from the anticancer drug paclitaxel/taxol. The key synthetic challenge in these molecules is a 1-(methylamino)-imidazole ring, and my goal was to create this moiety via condensation of methylguanidine and various diketones. In my hands this lead to a complex mixture of products under all conditions tested, troubles that were also reported by Coleman et al. the following year (Org. Lett. 2009, 11, 2133−6).

Quesnel, British Columbia

Quality assurance, performing basic analysis on sawdust, air and water quality. Updated the site MSDS.

Phd, Chemistry

Bachelor'S Of Science, Molecular Biology And Biochemistry