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Marina Fortes has a degree in Veterinary Medicine (2004) and a Master of Science in Animal Reproduction (2007) from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She completed her PhD in genetics, in 2012 at The University of Queensland (UQ). For her PhD Marina had international scholarships from UQ and the Beef CRC. Her PhD received the Dean's commendation award. After that, Marina worked as a post-doc at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI). In August 2014, Marina joined the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences (SCMB) as an academic and established the Livestock Genomics Group. As a researcher, Marina is interested in genetics and genomics, sustainable livestock production, and reproductive biology. Ongoing collaborations link her group to a rich research environment, both domestic and international, which contributes to sustainable livestock industries. Meat and Livestock Australia has provided ongoing support to the projects led by her group. For her work on the genomics of cow fertility, Marina received an Advanced Queensland Fellowship (2018-2021). Marina teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including the Livestock Biotechnology course (BIOT7038) within the Master of Biotechnology program. The Women in Science podcast - https://soundcloud.com/womeninscience - was produced by Marina Fortes, Marloes Dekker, and Kirsty Short.

I completed my PhD, supervised by Dr. Jan Engelstaedter, investigating host shift dynamics of parasites within a host clade. In this project I am was interested in understanding the long-term dynamics and consequences of host-shift dynamics, while taking into account the evolutionary relationships between host species. I was interested in identifying predictable patterns in the distribution of pathogens using statistical and mathematical modeling.

Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher working at the University of Queensland under Dr. Christine Beveridge. I will be creating computational models of plant hormone signalling in order to make predictions on the phenotypic outcomes of plant species.

Dr. Forutan is an internationally recognized Researcher. Her research area includes understanding the bovine genome and epigenome, discovering causative mutation underlying economic important traits such as fertility, understanding the way genes turn on and off, investigating different methodologies to improve the accuracy of genomic prediction, and optimizing methods for predicting genetic diversity and inbreeding. Her future research career vision is to make a significant contribution to creating new knowledge in the field of quantitative genetics that can help to improve efficiency and resilience in Livestock.

My lab investigates the physiological and behavioural responses of fish, frogs and reptiles to changing environmental conditions including assessing and predicting the impact of human-induced environmental change. A major thrust of this research is within the emerging field of Conservation Physiology. We are particularly interested in the capacity and plasticity of physiological systems (e.g. respiratory, cardiovascular, osmoregulatory, digestive and musculo-skeletal) to compensate and maintain performance under changing environmental conditions.

We combine lab-based experimental studies with fieldwork, and take an integrative approach that utilises ecological, behavioural, physiological and genomic methodologies. In the field we utilise remote sensing technology (acoustic and satellite telemetry, archival tags) to investigate the movement patterns and behaviours of animals in relation to environmental conditions.

Current projects include:

• assessing the effects of increasing temperatures on sharks, frogs, turtles and crocodiles;
• determining the physiological basis for the impact of increasing UV-B radiation on frogs;
• diving behaviour and physiology of freshwater turtles and crocodiles;
• acoustic and satellite tracking of sharks, turtles and crocodiles in Queensland;
• regulation of physiological function in aestivating frogs

Venoms play a range of adaptive roles in the animal kingdom from predation to defense to competitor deterrence. Remarkably, despite their biological importance and uniqueness, the evolution of venom systems is poorly understood. New insights into the evolution of venom systems and the importance of the associated toxins cannot be advanced without recognition of the true biochemical, ecological, morphological and pharmacological diversity of venoms and associated venom systems. A major limitation has been the very narrow taxonomical range studied. Entire groups of venomous animals remain virtually unstudied. My research is inherently interdisciplinary, integrating ecological, evolutionary, and functional genomics approaches in order to understand the evolution of venom systems. Studies range from discovering the shock-inducing hypotensive and anticoagulant venom of the iconic Komodo Dragon through to exploring the unique temperature specific adaptations of Antarctic octopus venoms.

General Research specialises in: Evolutionary microbiology, Marine microbiology; Molecular phylogenetics, genomics and bioinformatics of bacteria; Planctomycete bacteria; Bacterial cell biology and structure.

Current research projects include:

The actions of people just like you and me have caused a massive biodiversity crisis, pushing many species to the brink of extinction and beyond. Doing something about this is one of the most important and urgent problems globally. I am interested in understanding how people have affected the natural world around them, and how some of their destructive effects can best be reversed. On the flip side, I am also keen to understand whether people can benefit positively from experiences of biodiversity.

To answer these questions I work on pure and applied topics in biodiversity and conservation. Much of my work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the interactions between people and nature, how these can be enhanced, and how these relationships can be shaped to converge on coherent solutions to the biodiversity crisis. Current research topics include the ecology and conservation of migratory species, understanding what drives some people to show stronger environmental concern than others, and strategies for designing efficient conservation plans. I enjoy working closely with all my wonderful colleagues in the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

My research focuses on the biological control and integrated management of insect pests. Understanding the ecological and biological relationships between insects and their natural enemies (pathogens, parasitoids and predators) and the interactions between these natural enemies is fundamental to effective biological control and is central to my research. Strategies which manipulate natural enemies to enhance their impact on pest populations are under development, examples include

• Integration of biological stressors and fungal entomopathogens for improved control of insect pests
• Reduced insecticide inputs combined with the provision of adult food sources to enhance endemic parasitoid performance
• Utilizing inducible plant defences to manipulate pests and improve the effectiveness of natural enemies.

Externally funded research projects concentrate on the development of sustainable pest management strategies for insect pests in developing countries. In Indonesia the structure and function of the natural enemy complexes attacking the diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella) and the cabbage cluster caterpillar (Crocidolomia pavonana) are being determined. In Samoa the biology and ecology of the egg parasitoid Trichogramma chilonis is being investigated and the possibility of its release as a biological control agent of C. pavonana in Fiji, Tonga and Solomon Islands explored. Research in Fiji is focused on quantifying field resistance of the diamondback moth to commonly used insecticides. An insecticide resistance management strategy has been developed and will be implemented in collaboration with UN-FAO.

Sebastian is an expert on molecular pharmacology of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs - the largest class of cell surface recpetors and major drug targets). His lab has a particular interest in those involved in communication between the gastrointestinal tract and brain (the so-called gut-brain axis). Current foccusses include ghrelin, melanocortin 4, dopamine D2, and cholecystokinin receptors and the lab has also worked on the calcitonin, glucagon-like peptide 1 and other receptors. His lab is interested in answering complelling biological questions relating to physiology and pathophysiology of the gut-brain axis all the way down to the level of the receptor.

Sebastian is from Adelaide and received his BSc(Hons) and PhD. from the University of Adelaide, where he worked on the Aryl Hydrocarbon receptor in the lab of Murray Whitelaw. He then did postdoctoral research on haematopoitic stem cell differentiation in Kelly McNagny’s lab at the Biomedical Research Centre at the University of British Columbia before joining Patrick Sexton to work on G protein-coupled receptors at Monash University .

Sebastian is now an ARC Future Fellow with his own research program in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Queensland. He remains an adjunct member of MIPS DDB as well as CCeMMP.

Sebastian has honours and PhD positions for motivated students who have a strong desire to assume ownership of a project and work independently.

Professor Gabrielli completed his undergraduate education at James Cook University in Townsville and PhD at La Trobe University in Melbourne. After two postdoctoral positions in the USA in the emerging field of cell cycle regulation, he was recruited to establish his own independent research at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, and then recruited to the Diamantina Institute in 2002, and Mater Research Institute in 2016. He is head of the Smiling for Smiddy Cell Cycle Group.

Research Interests

Mechanisms that regulate cell division, particularly progression into mitosis. These mechanisms are often mutated in cancers and are likely to be major contributors to cancer development. Identifying the genetic mutations that disrupt normal progression and particularly mechanisms, known as checkpoints, provides diagnostic and prognostic opportunities. It also provides potential new targets for chemotherapeutics as drugs targeting defective checkpoints have tumour selective cytotoxic potential.

Research Projects

• Identifying the molecular basis for defective checkpoints in melanoma.
• Targeting defective cell cycle responses to ultraviolet radiation, replication stress and TopoII inhibitors in melanoma, and investigating whether the same defects in other cancer types respond to similar targeting.
• Investigating means of identify very early changes in moles that drive progression to melanoma
• Targeting Aurora kinases in HPV-driven cancers

Dr. Andrés Gambini graduated with honors as a veterinarian at the University of Río Cuarto, Argentina, in 2008. After a period on an equine farm, he completed a Ph.D. program at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and taught in Animal Production Department. His Ph.D. focused on in vitro embryo production in horses. He produced the first cloned horses born in South America in 2010 and Australia in 2018. In 2015, he started a two years postdoc at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in the USA, where he investigated mechanisms governing embryonic genome activation in mammals. Andrés was invited as a professor at the University of Torino in Italy and the University of Cordoba in Spain. He continues his research in animal cloning, ICSI, and other reproductive biotechnologies. He recently reported the first cloned zebra embryos worldwide. He stood as Assistant Professor at the University of Buenos Aires, providing more than twelve years of lecturing, and mentoring undergraduate and postgraduate students in areas of animal physiology and reproduction. Currently, he is a senior lecturer in Animal Science, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences at University of Queensland, Australia.

I am primarily a plant virologist but have has a diversity of research interests in mycology, bacteriology and even entomology as part of broader biosecurity projects. Living in Queensland has provided me the opportunity to work on diseases of tropical and subtropical horticultural crops such as banana, avocado, pineapple, citrus and sugarcane, and his expertise has been sought in developing nations throughout the world, particularly in southeast Asia.I strive to see fundamental scientific discoveries translated into practical outcomes for farmers. I also take a keen interest in promoting the profession of plant pathology through a previous role as President of the Australasian Plant Pathology Society, and my current role as Vice President of the International Society of Plant Pathology.

Dr Giacomotto, NHMRC Emerging Leader, is a young group leader focusing on translational research, genes and diseases, imaging/automatic systems, drug discovery, chemical biology, and medical applications. His work focuses on translating little discoveries made in a single cell or in a model organism to applications or treatments for humans. He has already made discoveries that benefit human health, such as treatment for muscular dystrophies. He is working with a wide diversity of models, including cell lines and mouse models, but he recently spent a lot of time working with the zebrafish model. He believes that this small fish will have an important impact on the seek of treatments for neuromuscular and neurological disorders. Those diseases are very difficult to reproduce in a single cell, making the search for chemical treatments difficult. This fish opens a new avenue for the screening of bioactive compounds and for understanding the progression of these terrible disorders. He believes in translational research, the zebrafish is for him a fantastic complementary model to cell lines in order to recapitulate human diseases and run large-scale experiments. He is working on developing future therapeutical strategies to alleviate the suffering of human patients.

Dr Giacomotto recently established his group at Griffith Research Institute for Drug Discovery (Discovery Biology, Griffith University) and remain an active honorary fellow of the Queensland Brain Institute (The University of Queensland). Dr Giacomotto is currently recruiting. Don't hesitate to contact him for further information.

Dr Giacomotto Laboratory Website

The molecular evolution of cytochrome P450 Enzymes: biological catalysts of unprecedented versatility.

Cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYPs, P450s) especially those responsible for drug metabolism in humans, are the unifying theme of the research in our lab. These fascinating enzymes are catalysts of exceptional versatility, and functional diversity. In humans they are principally responsible for the clearance of a practically unlimited variety of chemicals from the body, but are also critical in many important physiological processes. In other organisms (plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, almost everything!) they carry out an unprecedented range of functions, such as defense, chemical communication, neural development and even pigmentation. P450s are involved in the biosynthesis of an unequalled range of potent, biologically active natural products in microbes, plants and animals, including many antibiotics, plant and animal hormones, signalling molecules, toxins, flavours and fragrances. We are studying how P450s have evolved to deal with novel substrates by reconstructing ancestral precursors and evolutionary pathways, to answer such questions as how did the koala evolve to live on eucalyptus leaves, a toxic diet for most mammals.

The capabilities of P450s are only just coming to be fully recognized and structural studies on P450s should yield critical insights into how enzyme structure determines function. For example, recently we discovered that P450s are present within cells in the Fe(II) form, a finding that has led to a radical revision of the dogma concerning the P450 catalytic cycle, and has implications for the control of uncoupling of P450 activity in cells. Importantly, the biotechnological potential of P450s remains yet to be exploited. All of the specific research themes detailed below take advantage of our recognized expertise in the expression of recombinant human cytochrome P450 enzymes in bacteria. Our group is interested in finding out how P450s work and how they can be made to work better.

Artificial evolution of P450s for drug development and bioremediation: a way of exploring the sequence space and catalytic potential of P450s. The demonstrated catalytic diversity of P450 enzymes makes them the ideal starting material for engineering sophisticated chemical reagents to catalyse difficult chemical transformations. We are using artificial (or directed) evolution to engineer enzymes that are more efficient, robust and specialized than naturally occurring enzymes with the aim of selecting for properties that are commercially useful in the areas of drug discovery and development and bioremediation of pollutants in the environment. The approach we are using also allows us to explore the essential sequence and structural features that underpin all ~12000 known P450s so as to determine how they work.

Synthetic biology of enzymes for clean, green, solar-powered chemistry in drug development, bioremediation and biosensors. We have identified ancestral enzymes that are extremely thermostable compared to their modern counterparts, making them potentially very useful in industry, since they can withstand long incubations at elevated temperatures. They can be used as ‘off the shelf’ reagents to catalyse useful chemistry, such as in in drug discovery and development, fine chemicals synthesis, and cleaning up the environment. Working with drug companies, we are exploring how they can be best deployed in chemical processes and what structural features make them efficient, robust and specialized. We are also immobilizing P450s in virus-like-particles as ‘designer’ reagents that can be recovered from reactions and reused. To make such processes cheaper and more sustainable, we are using photosynthesis to power P450 reactions for clean, green biocatalysis in microalgae.

Biosketch:

After graduating from UQ with first class Honours in Biochemistry, Elizabeth took up a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Overseas Scholarship to pursue doctoral work at Oxford University then undertook postdoctoral work at the Center in Molecular Toxicology and Department of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine with Prof. F.P. Guengerich. She returned to UQ in 1993 to take up a position in Pharmacology and joined the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences in 2009 as a Professor of Biochemistry.

Vanessa is a plant ecologist working primarily in mine-disturbed areas, and also manages the Institute’s environmental laboratories. Vanessa’s work primarily encompass two themes: investigations of ecosystem resilience and ecosystem successional processes in rehabilitated plant communities; and disturbance impacts on rare and threatened plants. From this perspective, insights into mine closure issues are gained, particularly regarding feasibility of achieving benchmark rehabilitation goals, risk of rehabilitation failure, and knowledge management.

Vanessa has been a researcher at CMLR since 2008. Prior to that, Vanessa applied her research and technical expertise to projects on weed invasion, wallum vegetation, Bridled Nailtail Wallaby habitat and conservation, community-based riparian restoration, and vegetation protection on private land, as well as working for several years in the music industry. Her research work at SMI runs concurrently with her role as a laboratory manager, where she applies technical and organisational skills to ensure the Institute’s environmental laboratories run safely and efficiently. Her success has been recognised with several staff excellence awards.

Vanessa is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia, the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, and TechNet Australia.

After completing his BSc and MSc (Hons) at the University of Canterbury (NZ), Dylan worked for five years as a Research Scientist at Antisoma Research Limited (London, UK), developing antibody-enzyme fusion proteins for cancer therapy. He returned to New Zealand to carry out his PhD research into antidepressant pharmacogenomics at the University of Otago. Afterwards, he continued working at the University of Otago as a Research Fellow, studying the biological function of genes involved with inflammatory bowel disease. Dylan moved to the United States in 2009 to perform postdoctoral training, researching the functional genetics of the VEGF-pathway and its relationship with cancer at the University of Chicago and, subsequently, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In 2013, Dylan began working at QIMR Berghofer and has undertaken the functional follow-up of large-scale genetic studies of breast, endometrial and ovarian cancer to identify the likely causal variants and genes that mediate associations with cancer risk and survival. He has been awarded both internal and NHMRC grant funding to support these studies. Since 2019, Dylan has held an Honorary Associate Professorship at UQ

As of early 2021, Dylan has authored one conference report, two editorials, two book chapters, six reviews and 31 original research articles. He is first or last author on 20 of these publications and 27 of his publications have been cited at least 10 times. According to CiteScore, since 2010, 53% of his articles have been published in journals ranked in the top 10% and 19% of hispublications are in the 10% most cited publications worldwide.

Professor Ian Godwin has over 30 years’ experience in plant biotechnology research, first undertaking sugar beet genetic engineering at Birmingham University in the UK in the 1980s. He joined UQ in 1990, holding an academic position in plant molecular genetics. In 2019 he joined QAAFI as Director of the Centre for Crop Science.

He leads research in the use of biotechnological tools for crop improvement, with emphasis on the sustainable production of grain crops. Major focus is on the improvement of crops for food, feed and bio-industrial end-uses. He has pioneered the use of GM and gene edited techniques in sorghum. Research projects include international collaborations with a focus on food security and plant genetic resource conservation with collaborators in Germany, Denmark, the United States, China, Ethiopia and Pacific Island countries. He is passionate about the public communication of science, and has spoken at many public events on genetics, GM plants and food, animal cloning, and the future of agriculture in a changing climate. In 2003 he was an ABC Science Media Fellow, and has appeared on ABC and BBC radio on numerous occasions.

His popular science book Good Enough to Eat?: Next Generation GM Crops was published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2019.