Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Recipient(s): Prof SP Robertson | PI | Otago University
Prof MA Brown | AI | The University of Queensland
Prof J Cornish | AI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: Bones can sense forces, like gravity, and respond by strengthening themselves through mineralisation. A terminally differentiated cell that lies buried within the bony matrix is known to house the key mechanotransducer that mediates this effect, but the identity of the molecular sensor remains unknown. Through the study of Mendelian diseases with aberrant skeletal mineralisation we hypothesise that proteins called filamins fulfil this role and that knockout of a key filamin protein domain in the mouse will ablate mechanosensation in bone. This protein domain, encoding a flexible hinge is known to equip filamin with the ability to arrange cytoskeletal actin fibrils into configurations that optimise a cell's ability to sense, and withstand, shear forces exerted upon them. Identifying causative mutations in genes other than filamin in other individuals with similar bone accretion defects will also add to our understanding of the workings of this cellular sensor of mechanical force. These insights will not only be of considerable fundamental biological interest but also address the mechanism through which inactivity leads to bone weakening in the immobile and infirm.

Recipient(s): Dr IS Chambefort | PI | GNS Science
Prof JH Dilles | AI | Oregon State University
Prof CA Heinrich | AI | ETH-Zurich

Public Summary: The origin, composition and location of the deep magmatic fluids heating and influencing New Zealand’s geothermal systems are equivocal. Disagreement exists between scientific disciplines on whether shallow intrusive magma bodies feed the geothermal systems of the Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ). We will use both established and pioneering in-situ analysis of fluid inclusions and alteration minerals to:
1) Characterise the magmatic fingerprint and reconstruct the pattern of alteration zonation associated with magmatic degassing; and
2) Track the magmatic fluid signature in active geothermal systems in the TVZ.

This challenging Fast-Start project will be a world-first on active geothermal systems. The PI will collaborate with world experts in seeking to understand the magmatic-hydrothermal transition with access to cutting-edge analytical facilities.
Interpretation of the results will enhance the understanding of fluid-rock interaction processes at depth in the TVZ geothermal systems. New chemical constraints will emerge on the nature and evolution of deep-seated fluids from source to surface in regions of high crustal heat-flux, providing support for future research in magmatic petrology and evolution of the TVZ, volcanic gas chemistry, well chemistry and well targeting for deep geothermal exploration.

Recipient(s): Prof MA Steel | PI | University of Canterbury
Prof C Semple | PI | University of Canterbury
Prof O Gascuel | AI | Universite Montpellier 2
Prof Mossel | AI | University of California, Berkeley
Prof MJ Sanderson | AI | The University of Arizona

Public Summary: Modern ‘next generation’ DNA technology is providing unprecedented amounts of sequence data, within which the evolutionary story of life on our planet is hidden. Fundamentally new mathematical and algorithmic techniques are needed to deal with the scale of these data, and their fragmented and often patchy structure, in which genes are present in some taxa but not in others. This proposal will address three central theoretical projects that underlie the theory for building evolutionary trees from such incomplete data, combining the international expertise of five researchers across four disciplines – mathematics, statistics, computer science, and biology.

Recipient(s): Prof M Zhang | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Assoc Prof KC Tan | AI | National University of Singapore

Public Summary: Job Shop Scheduling (JSS) is important in the manufacturing industry. Given sets of machines and jobs, the objective is to determine a schedule that achieves good delivery speed and customer satisfaction. Due to interpretability to human operators and ability to cope with dynamic problems, dispatching rules are considered very attractive to JSS. However, manual design of such rules is difficult, time consuming and often infeasible: human operators are unable to identify all subtle and interrelated conditions between scheduling attributes.

Due to flexible representation and global search ability, Genetic Programming (GP) has been recently used to automatically evolve dispatching rules. Although promising, GP still has issues concerning program representations, attribute selection/construction ability, and optimisation/search mechanisms that are not sufficiently powerful and expressive, which often lead to unsatisfactory performance and non-reusable rules for complex JSS in dynamic environments.

We will explore novel GP program representations, new attribute discovery/selection algorithms, new algorithms for optimising multiple conflicting objectives, and novel dynamic rules with local search mechanisms to evolve reusable and competitive dispatching rules for JSS. These developments are expected to extend the expressive power of GP and improve the effectiveness and comprehensibility of evolved dispatching rules for JSS in dynamic environments.

Recipient(s): Prof RA Scheyvens | PI | Massey University
Assoc Prof GA Banks | PI | Massey University
Prof A Bebbington | AI | Clark University

Public Summary: The central question driving this research is 'Can the community development initiatives of mining and tourism corporations operating in the Pacific bring about locally-meaningful development?' While there are increasing calls globally for the private sector to play roles in international development, there is a need for more evidence of how corporations do community development to better understand both the potential and risks associated with this. We have termed these development initiatives of corporations Corporate Community Development (CCD), and will explore how they can potentially narrow the spaces of development or, perhaps, actively contribute to community empowerment, the promotion of human rights and social equity. This research will extend conceptualisation of the private sector's roles in community development by building on fieldwork at four tourism and mining case study sites across the Pacific. We will adopt a novel, qualitative multi-scalar methodology that brings in the perspectives of the corporations, states, communities and other actors. Responding to a recognised lacunae in the literature this research will examine the value of these activities from the perspectives of affected communities, and advance theorisation of the relationship between capital and community.

Recipient(s): Dr H Whaanga | PI | University of Waikato
Prof G Appell | AI | Brandeis University
Dr L Maffi | AI | Royal Roads University
Dr P Wehi | AI | Massey University

Public Summary: The ‘wisdom of the elders’ about how best to manage the environment is rapidly being lost, as is New Zealand’s biological and cultural diversity. This interdisciplinary research project will draw from linguistics, sociology, history and evolutionary theory to explore the knowledge and understanding of conservation and biodiversity embedded in whakatauki (Maori ancestral sayings). We will combine rigorous and innovative methodologies associated largely with the Western tradition of scholarship (Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis) with equally rigorous and innovative methodologies associated largely with indigenous approaches (consultation with cultural experts and Kaupapa Maori). Using the qualitative data analysis software NVivo, critical content analysis, an index of the cultural significance of New Zealand’s native flora and fauna, semi-structured interviews with Maori elders and other knowledge-holders, and network theory, we will investigate the contribution that whakatauki can make to contemporary issues associated with language and cultural sustainability, biodiversity and conservation. This project breaks new ground with an approach to modelling that sits at the interface between indigenous and mainstream understanding. We will collect and preserve a significant body of cultural and biological knowledge that might otherwise be lost, benefiting Maori language and culture, linguistics and conservation in New Zealand.

Recipient(s): Prof MP Nash | PI | The University of Auckland
Assoc Prof IJ LeGrice | PI | The University of Auckland
Assoc Prof AY Young | PI | The University of Auckland
Prof S Neubauer | AI | University of Oxford

Public Summary: The heart is a mechanical pump whose function can only be understood by combining engineering with biology. Heart failure is a leading cause of death in New Zealand and is particularly prevalent among Maori. Some patients with heart failure exhibit poor contraction whereas others show impaired relaxation and filling. Despite extensive research, effective diagnosis and treatments are hampered by a fundamental lack of understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the various forms of heart failure. We believe that medical imaging can be used in combination with engineering analysis and biological knowledge to understand the underlying mechanisms of the different types of heart failure. Our team has pioneered internationally acclaimed methods for measuring the structural and functional changes occurring in heart failure. In collaboration with Oxford University, we will apply these methods to state of the art patient imaging data. We will develop a new biophysical analysis of heart function that combines biological information with safe imaging examinations in an innovative engineering framework. This will result in personalised evaluations of heart failure mechanisms, which are adapted for each patient. This new knowledge will shed light on possible new heart failure treatments that target the specific forms of the disease.

Recipient(s): Dr DJJ Leemans | PI | The University of Auckland
Prof MCE Conder | AI | The University of Auckland
Prof E Schulte | AI | Northeastern University

Public Summary: Polytopes are incidence structures generalizing well-known discrete
geometric figures in euclidian spaces including the Platonic solids
and their relatives. This project focuses on abstract polytopes
exhibiting a high degree of geometric, combinatorial, and/or algebraic
symmetry. As in classical geometric contexts, rich symmetry can best
be described in terms of the abundance of reflections and/or
rotations. There will be particular emphasis on the interplay between the
two kinds of maximum possible symmetry, namely chirality and regularity.
The regular polytopes have maximum possible symmetry, regardless of
any qualification, and are in fact symmetric by reflection. Chiral
polytopes, on the other hand, have maximum possible symmetry by
rotation but lack symmetry by reflection. The goal is to gain a deeper
understanding of chirality in polytopes, and in particular to
investigate the fundamental question of prevalence, asking whether the
world of polytopes is more chiral or more regular. The finite simple
groups are a natural source for highly-symmetric polytopes. We
investigate regular and chiral polytopes with automorphism groups
closely related to simple groups, and attempt to provide new
insights into the question of prevalence.

Recipient(s): Dr AK Dunbier | PI | University of Otago

Public Summary: The interaction of the immune system in cancer development and progression remains one of the most challenging questions in immunology. It has emerged that immune cells can suppress tumour growth but paradoxically, they may also promote tumour progression. Precisely what determines which of these roles will predominate is not well understood.

In breast cancer, conflicting studies show immune cell infiltration into the tumour can be an indicator of both good and poor outcomes. Our recent data suggest that anti-oestrogen therapy, a common treatment for oestrogen receptor positive breast cancer, increases immune cell infiltration and that infiltration is associated with poor response to treatment. We hypothesise that molecules secreted by oestrogen deprived tumour cells recruit immune cells, which then fuel the growth of the tumour, contributing to the observed resistance to treatment. We aim to demonstrate this in a mouse model of breast cancer. We will use this model to investigate which specific subtypes of immune cells are recruited when oestrogen is absent and trial using a common anti-inflammatory drug to modulate this response. This research will help elucidate the mechanisms that drive immune cells to infiltrate and fuel cancers, and identify ways that this can be regulated to improve outcomes.

Recipient(s): Dr P Rosengrave | PI | University of Otago
Prof B Baer | AI | The University of Western Australia
Prof R Montgomerie | AI | Queen's University

Public Summary: Males of many species respond to a variety of social cues—like the presence of a female or competitor—by making rapid adjustments to sperm quality (sperm number, swimming speed and morphology) that maximizes their reproductive success. How such ejaculate adjustments occur remains largely unknown, and whether such adjustment actually alters a male’s reproductive success against a competitor has seldom been examined. Using a series of innovative social manipulation experiments in chinook salmon, we will determine: (i) how ejaculate quality adjusts to changes in social status, and (ii) which characteristics of the ejaculate actually change—the gametes themselves, the seminal fluid released with the sperm, or both. We will also explore whether sex hormones have a role in mediating ejaculate adjustments, and whether changes in the ejaculate actually affect a male’s reproductive success when competing with other males to fertilise a batch of eggs. Improved knowledge of the effects of seminal fluid on sperm function and its effects on male reproductive performance and fitness will increase our understanding of male fertility in humans, livestock, and aquaculture.