Our research lab was renovated between May to December 2024, and is now the home to both the McKenna and Ripstein biochemistry groups in the Department of Chemistry. Check out some photos here, here, and here!

The McKenna Lab welcomes Liam Zamora as a new PhD student in the group. Liam their Molecular and Cellular Biology MSc degree last year at Sorbonne University in France.

Congrats to Danny, Nicole and Evan for getting their review on the role of SRP9/SRP14 in regulating Alu RNA in the journal RNA Biology!

Congrats to McKenna lab member Daniel Gussakovsky and department colleague Jörg Stetefeld on launching White Otter Biotech. Danny secured Micas Accelerate funding to launch aspects of the company while a PhD student in my research group related to fish biodiversity monitoring using environmental DNA and RNA.

The McKenna Lab welcomes Alyssa Cohen as a new MSc student in the group. Alyssa completed their Microbiology degree last year at the University of Manitoba, and had previously worked int he McKenna lab as an honours thesis student.

In collaboration with Dr. Mark Nachtigal from Biochemistry & Medical Genetics at the University of Manitoba, work from our group led by Dr. Evan Booy describing the processing of a non-coding RNA, BC200, into a stable Alu monomer with relevance to Ovarian cancer was accepted in RNA Journal.

The McKenna Lab is thrilled to report that we received 5 years of funding from the NSERC Discovery Grant Program to support our research investigating regulation of pattern recognition receptors by viral and endogenous RNA.

Congrats to former McKenna Lab members Amit, Lok, and Nikki who published a comprehensive review on 2'-5'-oligoadenylate syntheses in Biochemistry & Cell Biology

Congrats to Evan on his work with the Sabine Kuss Lab at the University of Manitoba recently published at PNAS investigating cytochrome c oxidase deficiency detection!

Welcome to Navreet Ghuman, a grade 12 student from the Maples Met School, pursuing an internship project in the McKenna lab related to investigation of non-coding RNAs!