Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Research Associate

Degrees obtained:

• BSc Science Honors Co-op

Current Project:

HLA class I and class II genes of Kindred cohort

About: No data.
Email: yufum4@hotmail.com

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Bioinformatician

Degrees obtained:

• MD—Internal Medicine, University of Norman Bethune
• BSc---Computer Science, Unversity of Manitoba
• MSc—Biochemistry and Human Genetics, University of Manitoba
• Pursuing Ph.D.

Current Project:

• HIV Database Development and Maintenance
• Webmaster of ICID Training Program
• Webmaster of MRSI
• Bioinformatics Support

Email:liangb0@cc.umanitoba.ca

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• BSc major Molecular Biology - University of Winnipeg
• RT – Red River Community College
• ART – major Clinical Microbiology

Current Project:

Protein Identification and Antibody Production

About: Leslie is primarily involved in maintaining the sample collections for the ML study, purchasing supplies for the labs in Nairobi and Kenya. In the lab she is primarily involved with protein identification and antibody production.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• BSc - University of Manitoba

Current Project:

Sequence-based HLA genotyping and maintenance

About: Sue oversees the ABI 3100 Genetic Analyzer and the Real-Time LightCycler Thermocycler within the molecular biology core facilities at the Department of Medical Microbiology. She supervises the Paediatric Infectious Disease Laboratory and manages the Mother-Child HIV Transmission Kenyan Cohort clinical database and specimen database. Her research projects include Sequence-based HLA genotyping and maintenance and generation of an immortalised cell line collection.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician - Co-op/Summer Student staffer

Degrees obtained:

• BSc Science Honors Co-op

Current Project:

HLA class I and class II genes of Kindred cohort

About: Thomas started in the Plummer lab as a technician May, 2003 - typing the HLA-C gene in the ML cohort. Soon after, he did similar work with SARS patients doing Class I typing. He has also done tissue culture work in Med Micro with the Kindred Cohort. Thomas has typed Class 2 HLA genes for the MCH cohort. Currently he is working on Whole blood isolations of the patients in the ML cohort and Typing all Class I and II HLA genes in the kindred cohort looking to see if resistance or susceptibility is passed on to family members. He also manages day to day operations in the Dr. Plummer’s lab.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• Bachelor of Science

Current Project:

Associations of HLA-DRB alleles with resistance/susceptibility to HIV-1 infection in the Pumwani Sex Worker Cohort

About: In order to study the effect of DRB alleles and haplotypes on resistance/susceptibility to HIV-1 infection in the Pumwani Sex Worker Cohort, Janis and I performed high resolution typing for HLA-DRB for all women in the cohort. Any associations between DRB alleles and resistance or susceptibility to HIV-1 were identified. Philip is currently in the process of organizing our data and results. Once that is finished he will be working on finishing our manuscript.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• B.Sc. Biochemistry - University of Winnipeg

Current Project:

Sequencing of the GAG region of Mothers and Children of the MCH HIV Cohort

About: Joel is currently working on sequencing the GAG region of Mothers and Children of the MCH HIV cohort. He will later be comparing these sequences along with CD4 counts and the like to establish rapid progressors and long term non progressors, as well as determine possibly a specific sequence or mutation that encodes for being a long term non-progressor or rapid progressor.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• B.Sc. Biology/Astrophysics (MUN)
• B.Sc. (Hons.) Genetics Co-op First Class Honours (UofM)

Current Project:

Linkage Disequilibrium investigation of the CD4 868T polymorphism with HIV-1 seroconversion and disease progression in members of the ML cohort.

About: Jeff is a EG-01 technician and primarily work on my own projects. However, he often trains co-workers in various lab protocols, and help people with their projects when necessary. Over 1000 members of the ML cohort have been genotyped for polymorphic regions of the CD4, MLF2, and GNB3 genes. Haplotyes were established and correlations with HIV-1 seroconversion are complete. The lab has yet to consider haplotypes/genotypes with disease progression (CD4 decline). A small number of samples have to be resequenced for MLF2 and GNB3. Some CD4 samples required nested PCR.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• B.Sc. Microbiology - University of Manitoba

Current Project:

HIV gag gene quasispecies and disease progression

About: Enisa Zildzic is a technician in the HIV and Human Genetics Lab (NML). Currently she is sequencing clones of HIV gag gene from the ML cohort. The assembled sequences will be used to examine intrapatient genetic (quasispecies) diversity of HIV gag. Enisa graduated in October 2004 with a Bachelor of Science - Microbiology Major degree. She worked as a technician in a lab studying yeast mitochondrial replication mechanisms, at the U of M campus, Microbiology department. Enisa has been at NML since October 2005. She is hoping to be attending medical school in September 2006, but am still waiting to find out if she'll be accepted.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• B.Sc. (H) Microbiology – University of Manitoba

Current Project:

HLA alleles and epitopes

About: Christina has a Bachelor of Science Honours in Microbiology and graduated in 2006. She has worked on and off in this lab since Sept 2004. Christina has participated in DPA and DPB typing, site-directed mutagenesis, and various immunological assays.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• B.Sc. Microbiology – University of Manitoba

Current Project:

HLA-B and mother-child HIV transmission and viral evolution

About: Chris Czarnecki is currently in his 3rd year of microbiology at the University of Manitoba. He is in his 2nd work term of co-op at the NML and is currently genotyping HIV positive mothers from the MCH cohort, specifically for the HLA-B gene. In the future Chris will be looking to genotype their children as well and possibly start cloning of new HLA-C alleles from the ML cohort.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• B.Sc. (H) Microbiology – University of Manitoba

Current Project:

About: David La currently works in the NML lab under the supervision of Dr. Ma Luo. In conjunction with Rae-Anne Hardie, a graduate student in the lab who is working on killer cell immmunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) of the 2DL2 gene, his project currently focuses on the 3DL1/DS1 KIR gene, in correlation with HIV-1 resistance. Past studies performed on the 3DL1/DS1 gene noted possible relationships with HLA-B molecules that contain the Bw4 motif at amino acid positions 77-83, particularly an isoleucine at position 80, towards HIV-1 resistance. This project focuses on allele-level typing of the 3DL1 KIRs using DNA samples from the ML cohort that have been previously typed for the HLA-B gene to the allele-level. Future directions include statistical analysis of data, focusing on HIV-1 resistant individuals and long term non-progressors.

Supervisor:

Dr. Frank Plummer

Position:

Technician

Degrees obtained:

• B.Sc. (H) Microbiology – University of Manitoba

Current Project:

About: