Karine Auclair

Karine Auclair
Alma mater	University of Alberta
Scientific career
Institutions	McGill University
Thesis	Biosynthetic studies on the polyketide lovastatin : enzyme-catalyzed diels-alder reactions (1999)
Doctoral advisor	John C. Vederas

Karine Auclair is a Canadian professor of chemistry at McGill University in Montréal, Canada. She is the current Canada Research Chair in Antimicrobials and Green Enzymes.

Education and career

Karine Auclair was raised in Jonquière, Québec. In 1994, Auclair completed an honor's Bachelor of Science in chemistry at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in organic chemistry at the University of Alberta in 1999 with Professor John C. Vederas She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco from 1999 to 2001.

During her post graduate studies with the research group of Ortiz de Montellano, she studied two families of heme proteins using varied techniques that included cloning, mutagenesis, and spectroscopy. Working with researchers at the University of California, Davis, she collaborated in the elucidation of the human HO-1 structures by NMR. She also prepared fusion proteins of human HO-1 with P450 reductase and with glutathione-S-transferase.

In 2002, Auclair returned to McGill University to begin her teaching career as an assistant professor of chemistry. She was named a full professor in 2016 and directs activities at the Auclair Laboratory.

Memberships

Since 2023, she has served as a member of the Board of Directors at the French biochemistry company Carbios.

Selected publications

• Kennedy, Jonathan; Auclair, Karine; Kendrew, Steven G.; Park, Cheonseok; Vederas, John C.; Hutchinson, C. Richard (21 May 1999). "Modulation of Polyketide Synthase Activity by Accessory Proteins During Lovastatin Biosynthesis". Science. 284 (5418): 1368–1372. Bibcode:1999Sci...284.1368K. doi:10.1126/science.284.5418.1368. PMID 10334994.
• Auclair, Karine; Sutherland, Andrew; Kennedy, Jonathan; Witter, David J.; Van den Heever, Johan P.; Hutchinson, C. Richard; Vederas, John C. (22 November 2000). "Lovastatin Nonaketide Synthase Catalyzes an Intramolecular Diels−Alder Reaction of a Substrate Analogue". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 122 (46): 11519–11520. doi:10.1021/ja003216+.
• Auclair, Karine; Hu, Zhengbo; Little, Dorothy M.; Ortiz de Montellano, Paul R.; Groves, John T. (May 2002). "Revisiting the Mechanism of P450 Enzymes with the Radical Clocks Norcarane and Spiro[2,5]octane". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 124 (21): 6020–6027. doi:10.1021/ja025608h. PMID 12022835.