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David is a Consultant Paediatrician, Metabolic Physician, Clinical Geneticist and clinician researcher. His area of expertise is the diagnosis and management of children with rare diseases. David is involved in multiple ongoing research projects aimed at novel disease discovery, improved diagnostic testing and treatments for children with inherited genetic disorders. He is director of a national clinic for Ataxia Telangiectasia brashat.org.au and has recently been awarded a $2.5 million NHMRC research grant for a phase 2/3 trial for treatment of this disorder.

Evolutionary and ecological genomics of marine invertebrate animals.

My lab's research is driven by a fascination with genomes that carry within them endless, brilliant solutions forged by evolution over millions of years in response to a constantly changing ocean. We tap into this to learn how the genomes of coral reef invertebrates and their bacterial symbionts interact with each other, and with the environment, throughout their life cycle. We study these gene-environment interactions in evolutionary and ecological contexts, using genomic, molecular and cellular approaches combined with behavioural ecology in natural populations.

We work often with embryonic and larval life history stages of indirect developers, as these stages are crucial to the maintenance and evolution of marine populations. Our current focus is around larval settlement and metamorphosis in the holobiont of the coral reef demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica. In recent years, our work has extended to functional genomic approaches to identify noval ways to control the coral reef pest, the Crown-of-Thorns starfish.

When not immersed in the molecular or computer lab, we are lucky enough to be immersed in the ocean, often in beautiful places!

Career Summary: 2009: PhD, University of Michigan, USA with training in cardiac physiology, modelling myocardial ischemia in vivo and in vitro, and development of therapeutic approaches for myocardial ischemia; 2009–2015: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Washington, Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, USA with training in stem cell biology, genomics, genome editing, and cell therapeutics for ischemic heart disease; 2015–current: Group Leader, University of Queensland (UQ), Institute for Molecular Bioscience; 2022-current: Associate Professor, UQ; 2018–2021 and 2023-2026: National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow. Dr. Palpant’s research team has expertise in human stem cell biology, computational genomics, and cardiac physiology, which enables them to translate outcomes from cell biology and genomics to disease modelling, drug discovery, and preclinical modelling.

My research interests are at the intersection of plant developmental genetics, functional genomics, and molecular and systems biology, following my doctoral and postdoctoral training in the USA. The research effort in my group is focused on harnessing transformative genomics technology to understand the genetics of plant development, and to discover regulatory mechanisms coordinating plant growth and development. We utilize a variety of plant species in our research, from the model plant organism Arabidopsis to grain and horticultural crops like wheat, mango, avocado and macadamia. We employ a range of techniques based on high throughout DNA sequencing to explore gene expression, chromatin accessibility and modifications from single cell to whole plant levels, bioinformatics and computational biology tools to infer genetic components of gene regulatory networks, as well as gene editing technology to evaluate phenotipic consequences of perturbations in gene regulatory networks.