• HAPPY CANADA DAY!
  Donors gain exclusive access to Canadian discovery
•  
• MINORITY REPORT
• Spotlight on: Will Kymlicka
•  
• GENOMES UNLOCK A GREEN TOOLBOX
  Organisms built to bounce back
•  

• WHERE SCIENCE, ART AND MEDICINE COLLIDE
  Featuring a genetic masterpiece

•  
• THE NEXT BIG WORD
  Polaron: noun • subatomic particle that doesn’t leave home without its polarization.

CIFAR SCOPE

Welcome to the summer edition of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research e-Newsletter, Scope. If you haven't already done so, please visit cifar.ca to find out about upcoming events, recent discoveries, CIFAR in the news and much more.

Scope is distributed quarterly to members of the CIFAR community to provide ideas, information and issues emerging from the world of advanced research.

CIFAR supports innovative programs that enable the brightest and most talented researchers across Canada to collaborate with each other and with their international peers on questions of global significance.
 

Happy Canada Day!
Donors gain exclusive access to Canadian discovery

Dear Friends,

As we move towards Canada’s Birthday we reflect on just how fortunate we are to live in Canada. We are privileged to have generous resources, intellectual capacity, and the diversity and uniqueness of our people.

Canada is a model of freedom with an international reputation for bringing diverse populations together. CIFAR brings together researchers from all over the world with the common goal of advancing global intellectual resources and knowledge. We are proud to call ourselves a truly Canadian institution.

CIFAR recognizes that the strength of Canada’s future lies with the emerging knowledge economy. We are working hard to build our strengths and our relationships internationally, and to nurture the very best minds to propel us forward in this sphere.

We think it is important to share our successes with our supporters and our community. This past year, CIFAR donors have had exclusive access to the finest in Canadian research.

Donors have had the opportunity to participate in interactive breakfast events with intrepid economists like Siwan Anderson. Dr. Anderson presented her work on the phenomenon of missing women – those who should be alive but aren’t. Her work was first featured in Reach magazine, and later made headlines in the Toronto Star and on CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition (begins at 20min mark). 

CIFAR donors have also attended annual dinner events. This spring’s annual dinner featured world-renowned geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica, who studies the impact of ice sheets collapsing due to global warming. His work was recently featured around the world – he predicted that if the West Antarctic ice sheet melts the way many researchers expect, sea level could rise as much as 25 percent higher than previously expected.

We believe in the importance of Canadian research and are pleased to bring you a glimpse into the future through the work of our program members. There are many questions in the world, and you help us ask them.

If you are not currently a donor, please consider becoming one before our June 30th fiscal year end – and reap the benefit of being at the frontier of human discovery.
 

Sincerely,

Chaviva Hosek O.C.
President and CEO,
and Lawson Foundation Fellow
 

Minority Report
Spotlight on: Will Kymlicka

The face of our society is changing. It is becoming increasingly multicultural and sophisticated, colourful and diverse. And while these evolving features lend many beautiful qualities, they also give rise to questions and conflicts. In this new paradigm, it is a struggle for ethnic and national minorities to maintain their cultural identities.

Will Kymlicka is a political philosopher whose research stands at the vanguard in the discourse of the rights and status of minority cultures. He was the first to contend that minority rights are consistent with individual freedom. A member of CIFAR’s Successful Societies program, he is exploring factors that affect societal health with a focus on the impact of multiculturalism.

The work of Dr. Kymlicka helps to confront current real world questions such as how to allocate rights and responsibilities while at the same time respecting cultural and linguistic diversity. His research also helps develop strategies for peacefully resolving inter-ethnic conflicts and maintaining cultural identity.

Dr. Kymlicka identifies key issues that are central to understanding multiculturalism but had been overlooked in the past. His focus on issues such as language rights and group representation was a ground-breaking approach when it was thought that individual ethnicity would simply dissolve into a nationalistic landscape.

He ascertains that there are subtle, yet defining, differences between the needs of immigrants and national minorities. He defines “minority nations” as groups with self-governments that were present at the founding of a nation. In Canada, “minority nations” are the First Nations people and the Québécois. The premise is that minority nations deserve unique rights because of their role in the history of a nation, while multicultural groups, arriving later and voluntarily, have some responsibility to integrate into the society. He elegantly acknowledges that refugees are in a unique category since they do not choose to immigrate.

Dr. Kymlicka’s insights earned him this year’s Premier's Discovery Award for the Social Sciences from the Ministry of Research and Innovation. The prestigious award cites Dr. Kymlicka as the “world’s leading expert on multiculturalism and minority rights in democratic societies.” He is the Canada Research Chair at Queen’s University in political philosophy with a significant goal – build a global consensus on minority rights.
 

Genomes unlock a green toolbox
Organisms that bounce back

Some of the tiniest organisms in the world’s oceans may also be the most resilient.

One of these – a green alga called Micromonas – thrives in oceans around the world, indicating that it is well equipped to tolerate environmental change. Integrated Microbial Biodiversity Program Associate Alexandra Worden recently made important steps to figure out why.

By decoding the genomes of two Micromonas strains – one isolated off New Caledonia in the South Pacific, the other off Plymouth England in the North Atlantic – Dr. Worden’s research group discovered genes that help these organisms capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transport it to the depths of the ocean. This activity influences the carbon cycle, a critical factor of climate change. The Micromonas also capture sunlight, water and nutrients, and produce both carbohydrates and oxygen. This makes them an important food resource within marine food webs.

“The genomes of these algae serve as tools to investigate their ecology – which is their response to environmental change and their interaction with other organisms,” says Dr. Worden. “All of these factors are part of the equation for predicting ecosystem shifts that result from climate change.”

The Micromonas genomes also reveal evolutionary clues about how photosynthesis transformed a desolate planet into the Earth that we inhabit today. Although these algae are oceanic microbes, they share many features with the ancestral organisms that initiated the “greening” of our planet.

“The trees and plants that color our continents are more closely related to aquatic microorganisms – these unicellular algae, in particular – than they are to the animals and fungi with which they cohabit,” says Associate Program Director John Archibald. Comparing the Micromonas strains to one another, and to other characterized algal and plant genomes, will help to demonstrate the dynamic nature of evolutionary processes.

“Micromonas algae might be individually miniscule, but collectively they’re massive in ecological and evolutionary importance.”
 

^{Genetic interaction map for the budding yeast.
Credit: Boone/Andrews Research Groups}

Where science, art and medicine collide
Featuring a genetic masterpiece

2,700 genes, 17,000 gene interactions, and millions of mutant yeast cells later, members of the Genetic Networks program have created a work of both science and art. Their masterpiece is a genetic interaction map for the budding yeast that assembles clusters of genes according to the different key roles they play within these cells. (Click on image to enlarge)

Budding yeast is the familiar single-celled organism that makes beer and bread. It is also a powerful model to understand how human cells function. Each yeast cell has 6,000 genes, and each human cell has around 25,000. One-third of these genes are the same, and it appears that the interactions between them are also consistent.

Program Members Charlie Boone and Brenda Andrews created the genetic interaction map for yeast, the first of its kind for any organism.
 
“These maps reveal the roles of genes on a large scale and also open the door to specific therapies,” says Dr. Boone.

Program Member Phil Heiter, a medical geneticist, is already applying this map to pursue specific therapies. He is interested in the bottom right corner of the map, where the yeast genes involved in chromosome activity, or chromosome dynamics, are clustered. These genes caught his eye because chromosome instability is a hallmark of most cancer cells, resulting when chromosomes don’t split properly during cell division. Chromosome instability is involved in approximately 85% of cancer tumours, including colon and ovarian cancers, non-Hodgkins lymphoma and many others.

Dr. Hieter discovered that the genetic interaction between two of the yeast genes for chromosome dynamics also exists in human cells. This means that in both yeast and human cells, if you “knock out” one of the genes, the cell is fine. Similarly, if you “knock out” the other gene, the cell is also fine. But if you knock out both genes simultaneously, the cell dies.

Tumor cells have an abnormal mutation in one of the two interacting genes. This mutation means that the tumor cells are susceptible to what Dr. Hieter calls “selective killing.” By knocking out the other, non-mutated gene, he was able to selectively kill the tumor cell. Healthy cells, which don’t have this mutation, are not susceptible to this selective killing and are therefore left alone.

“The idea of creating a yeast genetic interaction map and testing its conservation as a potential means of killing human cancer cells was proposed over ten years ago,” says Dr. Boone. “Only now have all the components come together, enabling Dr. Hieter's group to realize this landmark study.”

THE NEXT BIG WORD
Polaron: noun • subatomic particle that doesn’t leave home without its polarization.

As an electron charges through the atoms that make up a solid material, it can create quite a stir. Neighbouring positive charges shift toward it and neighbouring negative charges shift away, resulting in a distortion of the electrical charges in the material. This distortion, also known as a polarization, travels with the moving electron. Once the electron passes, the region returns to normal. An electron that carries its polarization along with it, changing the nature of the solid material around it, is a polaron.

The polaron concept applies to many materials, including high-temperature superconductors. Many researchers in the Quantum Materials program study polarons in an effort to better understand the bizarre behaviour of this promising class of materials as a potential superconductor.