Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Shedding light on membrane protein biogenesis and repair in oxygenic photosynthesis
Recipient(s): Assoc Prof J Eaton-Rye | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Photosystem II (PSII) is required for water splitting in photosynthesis. This dynamic membrane complex continually replaces itself to repair light-induced damage. We will dissect and characterise PSII assembly and turnover to elucidate novel mechanisms associated with membrane-protein assembly. Cyanobacterial mutants that target either PSII biogenesis or repair will enable us to test the hypothesis that an assembly intermediate directly regulates the translation of a subunit required for complete formation of the mature membrane-protein complex. Additionally, we will determine the role of a novel chaperone in the biogenesis and repair pathways and establish the minimum protein complement required for water splitting.
Total Awarded: $720,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Assoc Prof J Eaton-Rye
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 08-UOO-043
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Shedding new light on the eye
Recipient(s): Dr FDG Vanholsbeeck | PI | The University of Auckland
Associate Professor BF Kennedy | AI | University of Western Australia
Dr E Vaghefi | AI | The University of Auckland
Professor AGH Podoleanu | AI | University of Kent
Public Summary: Biomedical imaging made perfect: real-time, contactless, and long range non-invasive tissue characterisation at high resolution. We aim to make this possible by combining several innovative elements of optical coherence tomography, including our newly developed long coherence length swept sources. With powerful algorithms in the mix, we will discriminate different tissues based on small differences in the way light propagates through them. Multiple contrast agents will be used. Chromatic dispersion, or the slowing down of light as a function of wavelength, will measure subtle change in the tissue composition. Elastographic measurements will provide maps of the tissue stiffness, which can be used for diagnostic purpose as diseases invariably alter the tissue stiffness. Our research will focus specifically on imaging the eye. With the collective effort of our team, we will apply these novel techniques to detect minute changes in the eye's physiology which are invaluable in clinical ophthalmic research. Ultimately, this will lead to immediate, non-invasive, in-situ optical biopsies, for early detection of various conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. Worldwide health improvements will follow. Our team has the right unique interdisciplinary set of skills in imaging, laser physics and ophthalmology to make this dream come true, now.
Total Awarded: $800,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr FDG Vanholsbeeck
Panel: EIS
Project ID: 15-UOA-023
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: Sight unseen: penetrating the enigma of unconscious vision.
Recipient(s): Associate Professor AJ Lambert | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Intriguingly, visual processing in the brain involves both an unconscious, and a conscious pathway. Therefore, conventional assessment methods, in which participants report what can be seen consciously, provide an incomplete picture of visual function. This project will test predictions derived from our theory that the unconscious pathway guides eye movements, and develop a technique that assesses unconscious vision by measuring eye movements. This technique will enable direct comparisons to be made between unconscious vision and conscious vision. Our approach will lead to a more complete understanding of vision, and enable more comprehensive assessments of visual function to be undertaken.
Total Awarded: $675,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Associate Professor AJ Lambert
Panel: EHB
Project ID: 16-UOA-101
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Silencing immunity to determine how pathogens influence invasion success
Recipient(s): Professor PJ Lester | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr JW Baty | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr MAM Gruber | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr DM Tompkins | AI | Landcare Research
Public Summary: Many invasive species exhibit boom-and-bust dynamics. After initially becoming hyper-abundant, invaders can decline to local or regional extinction. Pathogens and their interaction with host immunity have been proposed as the cause of these declines. Pathogens may be lethal or have sub-lethal effects, reducing the competitive ability of invaders by forcing them to allocate valuable resources to their immune systems. We will determine how pathogens and their hosts immune response influence a globally widespread invader’s competitive ability, persistence, and population and community dynamics. Argentine ants will be used as a model study system. We will stifle the Argentine ant’s immunity to a suite of known viral pathogens and bacteria using gene silencing via specifically designed dsRNA. Several different immune pathways and genes will be targeted. We will investigate the role of immunity in inter-specific interactions and the fitness of these ants in laboratory trials. Finally, a field experiment will attempt to instigate a pathogen epidemic using dsRNA treatments designed to maximally impact Argentine ant immunity. Gene silencing and dsRNA technology is an emerging tool that offers immense potential to advance our understanding of how physiology influences ecology. It has also been suggested as the “next generation” of pest control techniques.
Total Awarded: $925,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Professor PJ Lester
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 17-VUW-005
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: Silencing unwanted expression in molecular circuits using naturally evolved solutions
Recipient(s): Professor CW Ronson | PI | University of Otago
Professor CS Bond | AI | University of Western Australia
Dr JP Ramsay | AI | Curtin University
Public Summary: Synthetic molecular circuits can be assembled that carry out novel reactions and process simple computations. However assembling complex circuitry presents significant hurdles, as stochastic biological fluctuations (noise) can activate molecular switches in the absence of stimuli. Furthermore rapid protein inactivation is critical for dynamic circuits to function correctly, and if proteins are slow to degrade, the circuit may slow down or stop functioning altogether. Currently there are very few ways available to inactivate regulators once they are expressed. We have discovered a novel “antiactivator” protein, QseM, that tightly suppresses activation of a natural quorum-sensing circuit through binding and inhibition of two distinct transcriptional activators, and is impervious to noise. We will solve the 3D structure of QseM and characterise its antiactivation mechanism against the two targets using in vivo and in vitro approaches. ‘Proof of principle' for the utilisation of QseM in synthetic biology will be demonstrated by both constructing artificial antiactivator targets from components commonly used in synthetic circuits, and by constructing a synthetic and controllable genetic toggle switch based on quorum sensing activators and their cognate antiactivators.
Total Awarded: $750,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Professor CW Ronson
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 16-UOO-207
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Single photon control of optical phase using ultracold Rydberg atoms
Recipient(s): Dr AB Deb | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Light beams interact with each other extremely weakly in conventional materials. This makes light a fantastic carrier of information, but severely limits its use in information processors. In this proposal, we will create an artificial medium, consisting of atoms at ultralow temperatures, where the interaction is so strong that a single quantum of light (photon) will control the transmission and the delay of an entire beam of light. A key ingredient for photon-based information processing in such a medium is the ability to catch photons and store them for long enough. This has proved a challenging task due to detrimental collisions between randomly moving atoms. By employing a variant of atoms that has a tendency to anti-bunch for fundamental reasons, we will make atoms stay away from each other. This keeps lossy atomic collisions at bay and achieves long-lived storage and an efficient retrieval of photons on-demand. Enabled by this, we will build - piece by piece - a photonic logic module where two light beams act strongly upon each other in a highly controlled way. Our novel and scalable approach addresses a fundamental, long-standing goal of quantum optics and extends the frontiers of photon-based quantum technologies.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr AB Deb
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 17-UOO-230
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2009
Title: Slavery in Maori society: myths and realities to c. 1860
Recipient(s): Dr H Petrie | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Slaves comprised a significant proportion of the Maori population, yet no in-depth studies of that sector of society have been published to date. This project will consider the purpose and function of Maori slavery, contemporary attitudes in the British Colonial Office, and their impact on early colonial government policies and practices. It will critically consider references to slavery in current historiography, which may still be coloured by nineteenth-century attitudes towards Trans-Atlantic slavery. The project will make an important contribution to scholarship relating to pre-contact and early nineteenth-century Maori social and cultural history and that of indigenous slavery internationally.
Total Awarded: $266,667
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr H Petrie
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 09-UOA-023
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2014
Title: Slow creep or fast rupture in faults? Linking nature and experiment to understand the earthquake source
Recipient(s): Dr SA Smith | PI | University of Otago
Associate Professor C Collettini | AI | Sapienza University of Rome
Associate Professor G Di Toro | AI | University of Padua
Dr SB Nielsen | AI | Durham University
Public Summary: Catastrophic earthquakes occur when active faults move abruptly, but many active faults also slip or creep slowly without causing damage. Examining rocks along fault planes in the Earth’s crust is a powerful way to study the complex physical and chemical processes that control this diversity in slip behavior. However, critical information on fault dynamics remains hidden because of our inability to link the structures we see in rocks to a particular slip style (creep or rupture). Using two powerful fault simulators, we will produce a unique suite of laboratory fault rocks over the entire spectrum of slip rates relevant to the seismic cycle. State-of-the-art microanalysis in the Scanning Electron Microscope, combined with numerical modeling, will be used to characterize the microstructures and deformation mechanisms in the laboratory fault rocks at nanometer to micron scales, and to compare laboratory fault rocks to natural examples of active and ancient rupture zones in the Earth. Our results will provide a quantitative microstructural framework for the distinction between fast and slow deformation in fault rupture zones, opening the door to a wealth of new information on the seismic cycle and contributing to a more complete understanding of hazard in seismically active areas.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr SA Smith
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 14-UOO-232
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Small higher-rank graphs, the structure of their operator algebras, and implications for the equilibrium states of the resulting operator-algebraic dynamical system
Recipient(s): Professor IF Raeburn | PI | University of Otago
Dr LO Clark | PI | University of Otago
Professor A an Huef | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: In mathematical models of physical systems, the time evolution is given by an action of the real numbers on an operator algebra. The equilibrium states of a system are characterised by a relation called the Kubo-Martin-Schwinger condition. This KMS condition has proved important also for systems of purely mathematical origin, where the behaviour of the KMS states often reflects important structural properties of the operator algebra. Our program seeks the mechanism for this relationship. To find it, we will study two families of systems associated to small graphs. We will introduce a new family of self-similar group actions on the path space of a graph, build operator-algebraic dynamical systems from them, study the KMS states of these systems, and interpret the results in terms of the structure of the underlying algebras. We will study KMS states of operator-algebraic dynamical systems of reducible higher-rank graphs, and expect to find interpretations involving the ideal structure of the underlying operator algebras.
Total Awarded: $550,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Professor IF Raeburn
Panel: MIS
Project ID: 15-UOO-071
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Smoothing and inference for point process data with applications to epidemiology
Recipient(s): Dr TM Davies | PI | University of Otago
Dr BM Taylor | AI | Lancaster University
Professor ML Hazelton | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: Point process models are used in a wide variety of applications to statistically analyse the patterns formed by spatial data. Critical in these models is specification of functions defining large scale trends in spatial patterns, as well as the dependence structure determining a point's tendency to attract or repel other points. Current methods for estimating these functions can perform poorly, particularly for highly heterogeneous patterns of the type that are observed in many applications. As a result, the significant potential this type of modelling has to improve our understanding of spatial and spatio-temporal phenomena has not yet been fully realised.
In response, our overall aim is to develop statistical theory to improve methods for inference and implementation of flexible point process models in practice. Robust tools will be provided to ensure that model fitting and assessment is reliable. Motivated by examples in epidemiology, the
work will extend to developing new approaches to estimating disease risk over geographical
regions and thus enhance existing methodology in this and other important and practically relevant areas of application.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr TM Davies
Panel: MIS
Project ID: 15-UOO-092