Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: SNPing away at genetic assimilation: does biased epigenetic mutation drive evolution?
Recipient(s): Dr EL Donovan | PI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: The process by which environmentally induced phenotypically plastic traits become fixed into the genome is called genetic assimilation. While it is clear genetic assimilation occurs, the underlying mechanism is unknown. We hypothesize a mechanism involving biased mutation of methylated cytosine-guanine (mCpG) sites based on observations that site specific CpG methylation occurs in response to environmental cues, and mCpG/TpG mutations occur at higher rates than other mutations. Thus environmentally induced CpG methylation may become fixed in the genome through mutation to TpG. Our hypothesis relies upon the assumption that the downstream effects of CpG methylation and mCpG/TpG mutations are not significantly different. I propose to empirically test this assumption by determining the downstream phenotypic effects of CpG, mCpG, and mCpG/TpG mutations at specific genomic sites using reporter constructs and varied in vitro conditions. If the effects of mCpG and mCpG/TpG mutations are not different from each other but are different from the non-methylated CpG, this will demonstrate a plausible mechanism of genetic assimilation and fixation, and environmentally biased phenotypes becoming incorporated into the genome. Our mechanistic understanding of phenotypically driven evolution and developmental plasticity will be significantly increased, and the results will help resolve conceptual issues in evolutionary developmental biology.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr EL Donovan
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 13-UOA-269
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: Soaking it up: unlocking mechanisms of sponge acclimation in a changing world
Recipient(s): Associate Professor JJ Bell | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Associate Professor MR Dunn | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Associate Professor SK Davy | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr EA Fulton | AI | Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Dr MW Taylor | AI | The University of Auckland
Dr NS Webster | AI | Australian Institute of Marine Sciences
Public Summary: Recent high-profile publications have highlighted the peril that coral reefs face as a result of our changing climate, and have stoked the debate about how future reefs might look and function. Our group has recently measured tropical sponge responses to ocean acidification and elevated sea surface temperatures, and based on these results we hypothesise that sponges employ molecular and microbial mechanisms to enable them to rapidly acclimate to climate change. Our experienced international research team will conduct an ambitious series of laboratory experiments, coupled with field experiments and observations at natural shallow water carbon dioxide seeps, to understand acclimatization mechanisms in sponges. We will use state-of-the art molecular tools to study sponge epigenetics: cellular and physiological trait variations that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence, but instead are the result of external or environmental factors turning genes on or off. This new information will be used to create globally novel ecosystem models that incorporate these mechanisms to enable better predictions about how future coral reefs will respond to climate change and function with sponges as the dominant fauna compared to reefs dominated by other organisms.
Total Awarded: $840,000
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Associate Professor JJ Bell
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 15-VUW-127
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Social meanings of medication
Recipient(s): Prof KP Chamberlain | PI | Massey University
Assoc Prof K Dew | PI | University of Otago
Prof J Gabe | PI | Royal Holloway, University of London
Assoc Prof DJ Hodgetts | PI | University of Waikato
Dr LW Nikora | PI | University of Waikato
Dr P Norris | PI | University of Otago
Prof A Radley | PI | Loughborough University
Ms H Madden | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: Medications abound in contemporary society, and many people believe there is 'a pill for every ill'. This project explores the social meanings of medications and their use within everyday life in domestic settings. Specifically, we will sample three types of households, those containing: younger children; people with chronic illness; and users of alternative medications. Information will be sought through interviews, discussions, observations, diaries and photographic tasks, and from the contents of first aid kits and medicine cabinets. Our aims are to discern what medications are present, their pathways through such households, their symbolic meanings, and social practices involving their use.
Total Awarded: $573,333
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Prof KP Chamberlain
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 08-MAU-002
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2009
Title: Solving the mystery of sustained ocean fertility at the Subantarctic Front. Seismic oceanography gives us the means
Recipient(s): Dr AR Gorman | PI | University of Otago
Associate Professor RD Frew | AI | University of Otago
Professor WS Holbrook | AI | University of Wyoming
Dr R Vennell | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Australasia's first seismic oceanography project will provide detailed new images of the fine-scale (<10 m) mixing processes that occur at the Subantarctic Front east of the South Island to shed light on surprisingly sustained fertility levels. Current maps of physical and chemical properties of the ocean are inadequate because they are made by interpolating measurements collected by tools moored to stationary points on the surface or seafloor. Our proposal makes use of the exciting new field of seismic oceanography to produce high-resolution X-ray-like images of water masses using a technique similar to how ultrasound images a foetus.
Total Awarded: $616,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr AR Gorman
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 09-UOO-078
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Some Liked it Hot: Searching for Early Life in Terrestrial Hot Springs
Recipient(s): Professor KA Campbell | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor JD Farmer | AI | Arizona State University
Dr DM Guido | AI | Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Professor MJ Van Kranendonk | AI | University of New South Wales
Dr F Westall | AI | CNRS
Public Summary: Increasingly, prebiotic chemists favour life’s origination in land-based hot springs. Yet recognising vestiges of early life in rocks remains challenging because of subsequent alteration over billions of years. We propose drilling 3.5-billion-year-old strata in Western Australia, recently identified as the earliest hot-springs and replete with well-preserved, hydrothermally silicified biosignatures – i.e. distinctive suites of durable textural, mineralogical, and chemical indicators of life. Wide drill core will provide fresh samples for high-resolution geochemical and mineralogical analysis, and for fine-scale characterisation of preserved organics. Detailed comparisons of obtained core with hydrothermal deposits studied previously by our team (e.g. South Africa, Patagonian Argentina, New Zealand’s Taupo Volcanic Zone) will reveal interactions amongst hot crustal fluids, volcanogenic sediments and ‘extreme’ microbial life. Our refined 3D environmental model also will aid astrobiological exploration of a habitable martian paleoenvironment, and potentially one formed >3 billion years ago in a hot-spring setting at Columbia Hills, which is a finalist landing-site candidate for the upcoming NASA Mars 2020 mission.
Total Awarded: $958,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Professor KA Campbell
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 17-UOA-037
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2009
Title: Sound as an orientation cue: how far offshore can pre-settlement fish and crabs detect it from?
Recipient(s): Dr CA Radford | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr DM Higgs | AI | University of Windsor
Public Summary: Research has shown that pelagic larvae of some coastal fishes and crabs may actively find suitable settlement habitat by using extensive swimming abilities and directional sensory cues. Sound has been suspected as the main sensory cue used to guide the long range movements of these larvae however, this conclusion has now been severely criticised. The aim here is to resolve this debate using in situ behavioural choice experiments, electrophysiology techniques and sound propagation modelling. The results will provide new information for two of the major topical issues in marine ecology, population connectivity and the effects of anthropogenic noise on marine organisms.
Total Awarded: $266,667
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr CA Radford
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 09-UOA-105
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2014
Title: Sounding the heart: the mechanics of cardiac elastography
Recipient(s): Professor AA Young | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr A Kolipaka | AI | The Ohio State University
Associate Professor BR Cowan | AI | The University of Auckland
Professor MP Nash | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Stiffening of the heart muscle is thought to be an important cause of heart failure and death. This increased stiffness causes impairment in the heart’s ability to fill with blood, and leads to a substantial reduction in performance. Current treatment is ineffective in these patients, and development of better treatments is hampered by our inability to measure heart muscle stiffness non-invasively. New methods for safely measuring heart stiffness are now becoming available using magnetic resonance elastography. In this method, harmless sound waves are transmitted into the body and are imaged using MRI. However, the relationships between the resulting stiffness parameters and the underlying disease processes are not known. We will develop and validate new methods for understanding the mechanics of sound wave propagation in the heart. The motions of the waves will be interpreted using sophisticated computer simulations of heart mechanics, which incorporate the muscle fibre architecture and nonlinear mechanical properties of the heart. This analysis will discover how the underlying physiological changes can be quantified from non-invasive imaging examinations. The resulting test will enable more accurate diagnosis of patients and better understanding of the mechanisms underlying heart disease.
Total Awarded: $770,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Professor AA Young
Panel: EIS
Project ID: 14-UOA-063
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Southern Ocean fronts - Still an un(re)solved mystery!
Recipient(s): Dr E Behrens | PI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd
Professor CW Böning | AI | GEOMAR | Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Professor MH England | AI | University of New South Wales
Professor AM Hogg | AI | Australian National University
Public Summary: What controls oceanic fronts in the Southern Ocean (e.g., position, strength, variability) is still not understood. Ocean theory suggests that fronts are affected by winds, bathymetry and by the mesoscale eddy field, but to which extent is unclear. It also remains uncertain how fronts will respond to the forecasted wind and sea level changes as a consequence of climate change. This project will primarily focus on the northern most front in the Southern Ocean, the Subtropical Front. This front influences New Zealand’s climate directly and indirectly since it marks the water mass boundary between, warm, salty subtropical and cold, fresh subantarctic waters. The front is highly constrained by New Zealand's exceptional bathymetry, when it has to find its way through the narrow passages in the Macquarie Ridge system, south of the South Island. We will use regional ocean and climate observations and a series of novel high resolution ocean numerical model simulations, with variations in the wind fields and sea level, to challenge our current understanding about the controlling mechanisms and variability of this front around New Zealand. These simulations will provide new insights into how the Subtropical Front and regional climate will change in the future.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: NIWA
Contact Person: Dr E Behrens
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 17-NIW-005
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2011
Title: Spatial organisation of species distributions in coastal seascapes
Recipient(s): Dr SF Thrush | PI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd
Dr CF Dormann | AI | Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ
Public Summary: Hidden in intertidal sandflats of our estuaries are live shellfish, worms, and crabs. We are interested in defining how the relationships between their abundance patterns and different biotic and environmental processes change from single points to across whole intertidal areas. We will determine the importance of environmental characteristics within and across spatial scales and assess their interaction with biological processes. Thereby we will be able to better understand the interplay between fine- and broad-scale patterns and processes that underpins potential resilience in these ecosystems and improve our forecast of habitat preferences under conditions of environmental change. To date, most broad-scale research on species distributions ignores spatial patterns, scale-dependent variability, and biotic interactions. This limits our statistical analyses and, more importantly, inferences about ecological processes we draw from them. Our research team will visit more than 1000 strategically positioned sampling stations in three of New Zealand’s major harbours. Predicting current and potential distributions of species is critical for evaluating management options and understanding the importance of ecological change, leading towards a better integrated management of coastal ecosystems. This is fundamentally important due to catastrophic global shifts in many marine ecosystems, following over-harvesting, pollution, and the direct and indirect impacts of climate change.
Total Awarded: $747,826
Duration: 3
Host: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research
Contact Person: Dr SF Thrush
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 11-NIW-011
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: Spectacles in a bottle: Pharmacological regulation of the physiological optics of the ocular lens
Recipient(s): Professor PJ Donaldson | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor RT Mathias | AI | State University of New York
Dr E Vaghefi | AI | The University of Auckland
Professor TW White | AI | State University of New York
Public Summary: Age-related changes to the optical properties of the ocular lens cause refractive error, presbyopia and ultimately cataract. We have shown that lens optical power and vision quality are maintained by the active removal of water from the lens. Our collaborators have shown that lens water transport generates a hydrostatic pressure gradient, which is subjected to dual feedback regulation. Together we will test the hypothesis that lens water transport (pressure) is regulated by a dual feedback system, which operates to ensures a constant water content in the lens centre, thereby maintaining, lens volume (surface curvatures) and the intracellular protein concentration (refractive index), the key parameters that determine the overall optical properties of the lens. Since mechano-sensitive TRP channels play a role central role in this feedback loop, we will investigate whether applying mechanical tension to the lens, to mimic the process of lens accommodation, alters water transport and lens optical power. We believe that this system can be pharmacologically modulated to alter vision quality, so that interventions to prevent the age-dependent shifts in vision quality, which precede presbyopia and cataract, can be developed
Total Awarded: $810,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Professor PJ Donaldson
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 16-UOA-251