Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2014
Title: Linking genes, phenotypes and communities: uncovering heritable variation in community structure
Recipient(s): Dr JD Aguirre | PI | Massey University
Professor MJ Anderson | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: The effects of genes on ecological interactions can be particularly strong in cases where a species provides the habitat for other organisms. Differences in morphology and physiology among individuals of the habitat-providing species create distinct ecological opportunities, and can ultimately drive differences in the communities associated with individual habitat-providers. Uncovering the genetic contribution to variation among habitat-providers can therefore reveal the far-reaching effects of genes on broader-scale biodiversity. Many marine communities depend on the structure provided by kelp species. The strong biological link between structural variation in kelps and variation in the communities associated with kelp makes this an ideal experimental system to examine linkages between ecological and evolutionary change. We propose to use a quantitative genetic breeding design to quantify genetic effects on morphological variation in a habitat-providing kelp, and in turn the effects of kelp genetic variability on the structure of kelp-associated communities. We will use metabarcoding to quantify biodiversity, and exploit the power of this new approach when dovetailed within a rigorous experimental design. By explicitly considering heritable genetic effects on marine communities, our proposal seeks to unify evolutionary and ecological perspectives on the forces governing variation in biodiversity.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Dr JD Aguirre
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 14-MAU-077
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2011
Title: Littlest Hadron Collider: a laser based accelerator for ultra-cold atoms
Recipient(s): Dr N Kjærgaard | PI | University of Otago
Assoc Prof PB Blakie | AI | University of Otago
Assoc Prof E Tiesinga | AI | National Institute of Standards and Technology
Public Summary: We propose to build a novel collider to perform high precision atomic physics measurements. Like the high-energy colliders used in particle physics, our apparatus will smash together bunches of atoms and analyze the spatial distribution of the scattered debris. However, our collider will operate in a regime of extreme contrast: it will use samples of atoms at nano-Kelvin temperatures accelerated to pedestrian velocities of up to a meter per second. The full execution of this collider utilizes a unique collaboration with theorists who have developed state-of-the-art calculations to extract key information from the experimental scattering patterns.
The detailed understanding of how atoms interact at ultra-cold temperatures, and how magnetic fields can be used to manipulate these interactions and reversibly associate atoms into molecules, has been at the heart of cutting edge atomic physics and was central to the work awarded the 1997 and 2001 Physics Nobel Prizes. Our work will yield a better understanding of these interactions, which is of crucial importance for a wide range of applications, including the production of ultra-cold molecules, improving atomic clocks, and performing quantum simulations.
Total Awarded: $639,130
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr N Kjærgaard
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 11-UOO-189
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2012
Title: Living in the shadow of Angkor : responses and strategies of upland social groups to polity demise in the late- to post-Angkor period
Recipient(s): Dr NR Beaven | PI | University of Otago
Dr BM Buckley | AI | Columbia University
Ms AK Carter | AI | University of Wisconsin
Dr SE Halcrow | AI | University of Otago
Dr WD Hamilton | AI | Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre
Public Summary: Factors influencing the decline of civilizations may differentially affect communities on the margins of a collapsing society. How these groups fare during societal decline is central to key archaeological questions concerning population response and societal re-emergence. Archaeological research on the Late Angkorian era maintains a lowland-centric focus, mainly due to previous lack of evidence for highland groups' biological, economic and cultural responses to state collapse. However, by the late 14th century AD and the decline of the great kingdom of Angkor, some ethnic minorities had socially and geographically distanced themselves in the Cardamom Mountains of southern Cambodia. Their existence is known only from burial sites that are unique relative to rituals recorded in Khmer history: re-burial of human bone in log coffins and exotic ceramics, on exposed rock ledges. The sites hold previously untapped information on demographics, health, environmental conditions, and trade relationships, which are essential for answering archaeological questions about responses of marginal cultures in an era of political, environmental, and economic change. Using novel integrations of methods to examine the archaeological information from different perspectives, we will develop the first-ever characterization of a highland culture’s lifeways and how they fared in the Late Angkorian era.
Total Awarded: $626,087
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr NR Beaven
Panel: EHB
Project ID: 12-UOO-026
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: Locked and loaded? Effects of deep seismic and aseismic deformation on Alpine Fault earthquakes
Recipient(s): Associate Professor J Townend | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr CM Boese | AI | The University of Auckland
Dr S Bourguignon | AI | GNS Science
Professor MK Savage | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr DR Shelly | AI | United States Geological Survey
Professor TA Stern | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr AG Wech | AI | United States Geological Survey
Public Summary: A first-order challenge in seismology is determining how the earthquake-generating behaviour of large faults is influenced by ongoing, small-scale deformation processes. The Alpine Fault produces magnitude ~8 earthquakes every 200-400 years, most recently in 1717 AD, but is currently locked near the earth’s surface. Recently detected seismic waves emanating from depths of 25–45 km reveal, however, that the fault is slowly slipping in the lower crust. We will investigate these and other deep-seated deformation processes using new methods of analysing seismic signals, in order to learn how incremental deformation loads the Alpine Fault to the point of earthquake rupture.
Total Awarded: $717,391
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Associate Professor J Townend
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 13-VUW-101
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Looking for the laity in late antique Gaul, c. 300 - 700 CE
Recipient(s): Dr LK Bailey | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: This project examines the religious experiences and environments of the laity in late antique Gaul. It brings together archaeological, art historical and textual evidence to build up its picture, focusing on the interpretative rubrics of space, action and belief. It also explores the creation of the category of the laity and seeks to establish a sense of the diversity of their worlds. Study of the laity enables a deeper understanding of the development of the Christian Church in this period, as well as the means by which it was absorbed into Gallic culture and society.
Total Awarded: $157,988
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr LK Bailey
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 08-UOA-118
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2009
Title: Looking over a four-leaf clover: structural characterisation of a critical picornaviral RNA clover leaf and its interaction with a viral fusion protein
Recipient(s): Dr SM Pascal | PI | Massey University
Dr K Dutta | AI | New York Structural Biology Center
Professor J Trewhella | AI | The University of Sydney
Public Summary: Hepatitis A, foot-and-mouth disease, polio and the common cold are caused by picornaviruses. These small RNA viruses replicate via a highly conserved but poorly understood mechanism. We propose to determine the structure of three loops from a key picornaviral RNA cloverleaf that interacts with the principal viral protease during viral replication. We will also study the structure of the protease fused to the viral replication protein, the RNA polymerase. Finally, we will combine these molecules to study the larger replication complex. The results will more fully explain the way picornaviruses replicate and may potentially lead to novel viral drug therapies.
Total Awarded: $653,333
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Dr SM Pascal
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 09-MAU-009
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2010
Title: Losing the tops off submarine volcanoes: potential tsunami hazards
Recipient(s): Dr F Caratori Tontini | PI | GNS Science
Dr L Cocchi | AI | Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia
Dr C de Ronde | AI | GNS Science
Dr M Leybourne | AI | GNS Science
Public Summary: A long chain of mainly submarine volcanoes marks the Kermadec arc northeast of New Zealand, a consequence of collision between the Pacific and Australian plates. Terrestrial volcanoes commonly undergo sector collapse from weakening of the summit by geothermal alteration. However, the causes and extent of sector collapse on arc and backarc submarine volcanoes and potential to generate large tsunami events is largely unknown. We will investigate this phenomenon using gravity and magnetic geophysical techniques, combined with novel new algorithms that we are developing to accurately locate and map zones of hydrothermal alteration and rock mass weakening on southern Kermadec arc volcanoes. We will generate a model of edifice collapse using new high-resolution data from cruises in 2010 and 2011. Our geophysical models will be further refined using density and magnetisation analyses on rock samples collected from these volcanoes. These results, combined with morphological data of edifice shape and crustal structure, will allow us to determine the zone on southern Kermadec volcanoes that are most prone to sector collapse, thereby creating a tsunami risk. We will generate a tsunami risk model that will be applicable to all submarine volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Total Awarded: $260,870
Duration: 3
Host: GNS Science
Contact Person: Dr F Caratori Tontini
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 10-GNS-021
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Lost in space? New mathematical tools to analyse and search spaces of phylogenetic networks
Recipient(s): Dr S Linz | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor CA Semple | AI | University of Canterbury
Public Summary: Deciphering the evolutionary history of all life from bacteria to primates has long been a challenging endeavor in biology. Recently, phylogenetic (evolutionary) networks have gained popularity in representing complex evolutionary processes such as hybridization and horizontal gene transfer that result in mosaic patterns of relationships. However, the development of new methods to reconstruct phylogenetic networks from molecular sequence data is compromised because the vast space of phylogenetic networks remains poorly understood.
The goal of our project is to develop the first collection of sophisticated mathematical tools and algorithms to systematically analyze and search spaces of phylogenetic networks. We will establish new graph-theoretic operations that transform networks into one another and induce metrics on different network classes. Subsequently, we will analyze the resulting network spaces by means of an associated graph and investigate the mathematical underpinnings of three strategies to search spaces of networks. We expect the resulting tools to form the foundation towards an accurate reconstruction of phylogenetic networks under a likelihood or Bayesian framework. More broadly, the results of our project will have an impact on answering fundamental questions in evolution, infectious diseases, and linguistics that depend upon a disentanglement of complex relationships between organisms, pathogens, and languages, respectively.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr S Linz
Panel: MIS
Project ID: 15-UOA-037
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2009
Title: Lost in transit? Investigating the imbalanced world of erosion and deposition
Recipient(s): Dr G Lube | PI | Massey University
Professor HE Huppert | AI | Cambridge University
Dr JR Jones | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: Granular matter encounters almost every aspect of our life, where Brazil nuts segregate in our breakfast muesli, landslides block the main road to work and cars jam on the way back home. However, one of its most intriguing properties: the ability to co-exist and frequently transition between solid and liquid states remains poorly understood. In contrast to the traditional view of granular flows in a perfectly equilibrated state, we will systematically investigate the transition-causing force imbalances in variably accelerated granular flows. The results will define the needed theoretical framework to quantify and model the natural solid-liquid transitions erosion and deposition.
Total Awarded: $266,667
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Dr G Lube
Panel: PSE
Project ID: 09-MAU-110
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Lost in translation: Discovering how plant genes are regulated
Recipient(s): Associate Professor RC Macknight | PI | University of Otago
Professor RP Hellens | AI | Queensland University of Technology
Dr WA Laing | AI | Plant & Food Research Ltd
Public Summary: The precise control of gene expression is vital for an organism’s growth and survival. While transcriptional regulation (DNA to mRNA) has been extensively studied, translational regulation (mRNA to protein) has largely been ignored. The conventional view is that eukaryotic mRNAs encode just one protein. However, it has recently been discovered that large numbers of plant and animal mRNAs have short protein coding sequences (called upstream Open Reading Frames or uORFs) before their main protein-coding region. These uORFs regulate translation.
We recently identified a uORF that controls translation of the rate-limiting enzyme for the biosynthesis of ascorbate (vitamin C), the main antioxidant that protects plant cells from environmental stress damage. The uORF within the ascorbate biosynthetic gene enables it to be translated during stress conditions, when other genes are prevented from being translated to conserve metabolic energy. The uORF also functions to precisely and rapidly regulate ascorbate levels.
Here, we will dissect the mechanisms by which uORFs in the ascorbate biosynthesis gene, and in two other important plant stress response genes, regulate translation in response to drought stress. To improve plant tolerance to stress, uORF sequences will be altered by gene editing to enhance the expression of key stress response genes.
Total Awarded: $895,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Associate Professor RC Macknight
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 17-UOO-089