Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: Identifying the mechanisms by which CaMKII regulates cellular signalling in the diabetic heart
Recipient(s): Dr JR Erickson | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: The incidence of diabetes mellitus is rising in New Zealand and worldwide. Diabetic patients are more than twice as likely to develop cardiomyopathy compared to nondiabetics, while sudden heart failure remains the most common cause of mortality amongst those with diabetes. However, the signaling pathways that connect diabetes to cardiac pathology have not been determined. Recent work from my former lab group focused on identifying novel mechanisms by which elevated glucose availability during hyperglycemia activates Ca2+/calmodulin dependent kinase II (CaMKII). Activation of CaMKII plays a nodal role in cardiac cell death and arrhythmia, suggesting that hyperglycemia-induced CaMKII activity may connect diabetes to heart failure. Here we propose to examine the role of CaMKII activation in apoptotic signaling and the genesis of arrhythmic events during hyperglycemia and diabetes. Moreover, we will test the hypothesis that inhibition of CaMKII activity protects against pathological signaling in the diabetic heart. From these studies, we hope to gain new insight into the signaling pathways that mediate cardiac pathophysiology in the context of diabetes.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr JR Erickson
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 13-UOO-193
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Images of the city in New Zealand and Scotland
Recipient(s): Prof N Perry | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Notions of imaginary urban space are created by and through the media and arts and heritage industries.Cities and city imagery are contacts and catalysts for the cultural and social changes of globalisation. Images of the urban do not merely represent or symbolise the real cities that they evoke. Rather they are major sites for the construction of identities and citizenship, linking social interests, defining and staging ways of living together, of community, hierarchy and resistance. This is investigated by comparing and contrasting the changing urban imagery of the main cities in two societies (Wellington/Auckland in New Zealand and Edinburgh/Glasgow in Scotland).
Total Awarded: $271,111
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Prof N Perry
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 08-UOA-178
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: Imaging fibrous biomolecules with x-ray free-electron lasers
Recipient(s): Professor RP Millane | PI | University of Canterbury
Professor JCH Spence | PI | Arizona State University
Public Summary: Our understanding of biological systems and their function in health and disease depends in large part on studies of the structures and interactions of biological molecules and molecular assemblies and their relationship to biological function, which is referred to as structural biology. The recent advent of x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) is revolutionising structural biology, because they can image extremely small specimens of biological molecules. This gives access to large classes of molecules that have been inaccessible with existing imaging techniques. One such class are fibrous biomolecules and assemblies that play a variety of important biological roles, but are notoriously difficult to study with conventional imaging techniques. We propose to develop the theoretical, computational and practical methodology to allow the power of XFELs to be applied to imaging of fibrous biomolecules. We will work with international teams at XFEL facilities to develop and test this methodology and apply it to important fibrous biological systems.
Total Awarded: $773,913
Duration: 3
Host: University of Canterbury
Contact Person: Professor RP Millane
Panel: EIS
Project ID: 13-UOC-073
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2012
Title: Imaging of magnetic vortex pinning in high temperature superconductors
Recipient(s): Dr R Knibbe | PI | Industrial Research Ltd
Dr S Wimbush | AI | Industrial Research Ltd
Public Summary: Nano-sized defects in YBCO superconductors are critical to the wire's current-carrying capacity. Transmission electron microscopy is used by international researchers to understand these complex defect structures and populations. However, exactly how defects affect the performance of superconductors is not fully understood. Using electron holography, an advanced transmission electron microscopy technique, superconducting YBCO samples will be examined in-situ. This proposal draws on international and New Zealand expertise in advanced electron microscopy and superconductivity to directly observe the role of defects in superconductors. Not only will this work be of significant international scientific interest, but will simultaneously expand expertise in advanced quantitative transmission electron microscopy techniques within New Zealand.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: Industrial Research Ltd
Contact Person: Dr R Knibbe
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 12-IRL-007
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Immune cell migration: a new role for a 'clot busting' enzyme
Recipient(s): Associate Professor NP Birch | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor PR Dunbar | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: An effective immune response requires precise control of immune cell movement. This proposal investigates new ideas about how molecules called chemokines control movement. It will explore a new mechanism of chemokine control we have discovered, involving an enzyme cascade previously associated with the regulation of blood clotting, focusing on immune cell migration into and out of lymph nodes and T cell activation. Our results will shed new light on how migration is controlled and may identify new approaches to target human disease by regulating cell migration, particularly lymph node cancers and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Total Awarded: $840,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Associate Professor NP Birch
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 15-UOA-218
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: Implicit Language Aptitude: How to Learn a Second Language Unconsciously
Recipient(s): Dr S Li | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor R DeKeyser | AI | University of Maryland
Public Summary: Mastery of foreign languages is increasingly important in a globalizing world. This project seeks to contribute to the understanding of second language learning through the investigation of language aptitude. Conventional understandings of aptitude identify a set of cognitive abilities that are only important for conscious learning, but the bulk of language learning is unconscious. This project aims to identify abilities drawn upon in unconscious learning and will investigate whether learners with strong implicit aptitude are “smart” in a different way and have equal chances of success as those who are deemed “intelligent” based on traditional aptitude measures.The project constitutes a departure from the traditional conceptualization of language aptitude which emphasizes the importance of abilities for conscious learning such as analytic ability and rote memory. It will also enhance our understanding of the distinction between implicit and explicit learning, which has been at the heart of the theory and research on second language acquisition.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr S Li
Panel: EHB
Project ID: 16-UOA-119
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Improved modelling in evolutionary transcriptomics and proteomics will advance understanding of plant adaptation
Recipient(s): Professor PJ Lockhart | PI | Massey University
Dr M Becker | AI | Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops
Professor DJ Bryant | AI | University of Otago
Dr N Gruenheit | AI | The University of Manchester
Dr M Mirzaei | AI | Macquarie University
Dr C Voelckel | AI | Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology
Dr RC Winkworth | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: Reliably predicting the impacts of climate change on the New Zealand alpine flora requires an understanding of plant adaptation in New Zealand, an area of research that has progressed little over the last 100 years. Whether evolution can keep pace with climate change in part depends upon how fast plant species evolve to occupy the available environmental niches. Our proposal studies this capacity in two ways. First, to better understand current physiological responses we will evaluate how transcriptomes and proteomes respond to environmental stress. Second, we will investigate how and why these physiologies evolved. Together these studies will help us understand both the adaptive capacity of present day plant species and their likely responses to future environmental change. As a model we will investigate the recurrent evolution of drought resistance in New Zealand alpine Ranunculus species. Our novel approach uses high throughput methodologies for transcriptome and proteome analyses, physiological measurements of water use efficiency and metabolite composition, as well as novel approaches for sequencing and analysing whole chloroplast genomes. Our approach will test the hypothesis that hybridization allows for rapid adaptation and thereby improves the resilience of evolutionary lineages facing climate change.
Total Awarded: $925,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Professor PJ Lockhart
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 17-MAU-044
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Improving genotype accuracy for genome-wide association studies
Recipient(s): Dr BL Browning | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Genome-wide association studies are an effective tool for identifying common genetic variants that contribute to disease and heritable traits. However, genome-wide association studies can also produce hundreds of spurious disease-gene associations caused by genotyping error. I will develop statistical and computational methods that use inter-marker correlation to substantially improve genotype accuracy.
Total Awarded: $266,667
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr BL Browning
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 08-UOA-028
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: Improving ice core records: understanding the link between rapid changes of greenhouse gases and temperature
Recipient(s): Dr R Dadic | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor RB Alley | AI | Pennsylvania State University
Dr NAN Bertler | AI | Victoria University of Wellington and GNS Science
Dr M Schneebeli | AI | Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL
Public Summary: Ice cores provide unique archives of past atmospheric conditions. However, large uncertainties remain in the relative timing between temperature and greenhouse gas variations due to age differences between the gas and the surrounding ice. We propose a new method to determine for the first time the age distribution of the gases trapped in ice cores. This will lead to independent estimates of the gas/ice age difference under varying atmospheric conditions. We propose to use temperature-driven air bubble migration to estimate the pressure of individual bubbles and thus constrain the gradual close-off of bubbles and the resulting age distribution of gases in ice cores. For times of rapid climate change, including the last 150 years and abrupt climate changes further back in the past, knowledge of the age distribution of gases trapped in air bubbles will enable us to refine estimates of the rate and magnitude of atmospheric change. This will improve our understanding of the relationship between rapid changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and the temperature records obtained from ice cores and help us to learn how rapidly the atmosphere changed in the past.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Dr R Dadic
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 13-VUW-175
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: Improving radiotherapy outcomes: chain release of drugs to kill refractory cancer cells and inhibit metastatic spread
Recipient(s): Associate Professor RF Anderson | PI | The University of Auckland
Associate Professor BR Copp | AI | The University of Auckland
Associate Professor AV Patterson | AI | The University of Auckland
Dr JB Smaill | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: A common cause of failure in radiotherapy is resistance of cancer cells which are low in oxygen (hypoxic). We have discovered a unique mechanism by which inert prodrugs undergo a radical chain reaction, thereby releasing high concentrations of kinase inhibitors (KIs) within the hypoxic radiation field. The underlying radical chemistry that governs this process, and applicability across a wide range of chemical structures typical of KIs, will be elucidated. In concert, we will utilise clinical-stage KIs known to interfere with DNA damage repair pathways, and thus anticipate early success demonstrating marked radiosensitization of refractory hypoxic tumour cells. Critically, restricting the release of active KIs to the irradiated hypoxic volume will minimise normal tissue radiation damage associated with systemic administration of KIs, a recognised impediment to clinical uptake. Evidence of therapeutic gain will be obtained using traditional radiation survival assays both in vitro and in vivo. For the first time, targeted radiotherapy will not only sterilise aerobic tumour cells, but also catalyse a synthetic lethal event; production of DNA damage and the KIs necessary to inhibit strand-break repair. We predict the generality of this Radiation-Activated Kinase Inhibitor (RAKI) mechanism would see a successful example being combined with essentially all radiotherapy regimens.
Total Awarded: $847,826
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Associate Professor RF Anderson
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 13-UOA-131