Congratulations to Dr. John Rubinstein on being named the 2020 BSC National Lecturer.
John Rubinstein obtained his B.Sc from the University of Guelph in 1998. He received his PhD from Cambridge University (2002) where he worked in Medical Research Council laboratories under the supervision of Sir John E. Walker and Dr. Richard Henderson. Dr. Rubinstein was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology before returning to Canada for a National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) postdoctoral fellowship at the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research. He joined the Research Institute of The Hospital for Sick Children in 2006 and is a Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Medical Biophysics.
Dr. Rubinstein’s group, consisting of biophysicists and biochemists, studies the structure and function of macromolecular assemblies using electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM), image analysis, molecular biology and molecular genetics. His group also develops the tools of cryo-EM so that they can answer questions that are not amenable to the techniques that currently exist. This process usually occurs at the level of developing new algorithms and software for image analysis and performing calculations with images and models of molecular structure.
Recent biological projects have included the structural study of the mitochondrial ATP synthase, the Vacuolar-type ATPase, and the V/A-ATPase. They also study bacterial toxins that interact with mammalian cells.