Bright minds acknowledged for energy research

Ms Kastoori Hingorani of the Photobioenergetics Group attended the UK Energy Research Centre Summer School for first and second year PhD students at Roehampton University, UK, 22-27 June 2008.  Her poster presentation entitled 'Artificial Photosynthesis: Molecular Engineering of Photo-active proteins for H2 production' was recognized as one of the three most outstanding posters of the 44 that were displayed. The summer school brings together industrialists, scholars and policy makers on all aspects of energy with the students who will be the future of the energy industry.

Posted 18/07/08

Aussie animals show how sex changes generate new species
Friday 11 July 2008.

Australia's animals illustrate one of the key aspects of evolution — how reproductive barriers lead to new species — a leading geneticist will tell a conference celebrating 150 years since Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace first outlined the theory of natural selection.

Scientists will gather today for the symposium 'Wallace and Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection — 150 years on', hosted by the Research School of Biological Sciences (RSBS) at ANU.

Prof Jenny Graves' team played a lead role in mapping the platypus genome, which includes 10 sex chromosomes. They found that platypus sex chromosomes are nothing like those of other mammals, but more like those of a chicken. "This means that an ancient hairy reptile-like mammal that lived 300-million-years ago probably determined the sex of their offspring like birds and many reptiles do today....read more of the ANU Media Release.

Related publications:

Warren WC, Hillier LW, Marshall Graves JA et al. A list of authors and their affiliations appears at the end of the paper), Genome analysis of the platypus reveals unique signatures of evolution.
Nature (2008) 453:175–184 [view 100kb pdf]

Asian and European honey bees can learn to understand one another's dance languages despite having evolved different forms of communication, an international research team has shown for the first time.

The nine species of honey bees found worldwide separated about 30 to 50 million years ago, and subsequently developed different dance 'languages'. The content of the messages is the same, but the precise encoding of these languages differs between species.

Now researchers from Australia, China and Germany have discovered that the two most geographically distant bee species — the European honey bee Apis mellifera and the Asian honey bee Apis cerana — can share information and cooperate to exploit new food sources.

‘We know that the members of a honey bee colony routinely exchange information via dance about the location of newly discovered locations, like feeding places, water or new nesting sites,” explains Dr Shaowu Zhang from the Research School of Biological Sciences at The Australian National University.....read more of the ANU Media Release.

Related publications:

Songkun Su, Fang Cai, Aung Si, Shaowu Zhang, Jürgen Tautz and Shenglu Chen. East Learns from West: Asiatic Honeybees Can Understand Dance Language of European Honeybees PLoS one June 2008 Vol 3 issue 6 e2365 [view].

Honeybees can learn foreign 'languages' - LiveScience- msnbc.com [view]
Bees learn new languages easily - Telegraph [view]

Posted 15/07/08

Symposium: Wallace and Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
150 years on - current views

A symposium celebrating the 150th anniversary of the reading of the Darwin and Wallace papers was hosted by the Research School of Biological Sciences in the Robertson Lecture Theatre on July 11, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Eight highly accomplished speakers presented on a variety of topics to the delight of those attending. (Speech titles and complete program here). Summaries of each speech are being collated and will be available soon.

Posted 14/07/2008

Professor Murray Badger awarded Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science

Professor Murray Badger has been elected to Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science.
Murray Badger is an acknowledged international leader of research into photosynthetic CO2 acquisition and metabolism in aquatic and terrestrial organisms. His distinctive early contributions defined the activation mechanism and conditions for measurements of CO2 fixation and O2 uptake by ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase (Rubisco). He is acclaimed for discovery of CO2 concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) in cyanobacteria and algae. These minimize O2 inhibition of CO2 fixation and thereby unmask the co-evolution of Rubisco kinetics and diversity of CCMs, from cyanobacteria to higher plants. His research is typified by integrated, innovative approaches that have greatly facilitated molecular, genomic and functional characterization of systems from the cyanobacterial CCM to rate limitations of photosynthesis in higher plants. Murray is the 21st RSBS scientist to be awarded with Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science - a continuation of a remarkable record.

Posted 28/03/2008

Royal jelly makes bee queens, boosts nurture case

New research from Ryszard Maleszka's lab reveals the epigenetic mechanism that destines some honey bees to become workers and others queens. In a paper published on March 13 in Science they show that nutritional cues - namely the legendary 'royal jelly' that is fed to future queens - alter DNA methylation profiles and, subsequently, gene expression. The study shows how differential nutrition is linked to gene expression and how alterations in diet alter pathways that modify the developmental trajectory of an organism.

The research team includes Joanna Maleszka, Robert Kucharski, Sylvain Foret and Paul Helliwell.

Related publications :

ANU Media release [Royal jelly makes bee queens, boosts nurture case]
Daily Telegraph (London) [Why queen bees are made and not born]
The Australian [Royal jelly turns bees into queens]
ABC Science [Royal jelly triggers queen genes]

Sueddeutsche Zeitung
Access to Science paper

Posted 28/03/2008

RSBS 40^th Anniversary

At the end of 2007 RSBS turned 40 years young. With four decades of achievements to commemorate our Director, Professor John Gibson hosted a very special ruby anniversary event to celebrate this auspicious occasion on 5 December 2007.

RSBS staff, students, University executive and invited guests, enjoyed a rare opportunity to hear lively and vivid recollections of the early days presented by the wonderful personalities that are our esteemed foundation professors - Professor Frank Fenner, Professor Ralph Slatyer, Professor Barry Osmond, Professor Dennis Carr and Professor Adrian Horridge. ...Read full article.

Posted 18/12/2007

Photosynthesis researcher honoured

A special issue of the journal Photosynthesis Research, to be titled Recent Perceptions of Photosystem II: Structure, Function and Dynamics is to be published in honor of Kimiyuki Satoh and Thomas J. Wydrzynski (RSBS Photobioenergitics Group), in recognition of outstanding contributions to photosynthesis research and education throughout their careers.

Upon receiving his PhD from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1977, Tom was awarded a NSF Energy-Related Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on the water splitting mechanism in photosystem II at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After his postdoc he joined the Corporate Research arm of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana) to work on artificial photosynthesis. In 1985 he moved to Europe where he continued his studies as a Humboldt Fellow at the Technical University Berlin and a Wennergren Fellow at the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. In 1991 he joined the RSBS where his lab developed the first, direct measurements of the substrate water in Photosystem II. In 2000 he set up a program in Artificial Photosynthesis based on the reversed engineering of Photosystem II under the School’s Biotechnology Research Initiative. During his career he had the opportunity to visit many labs around the world working on different aspects of Photosystem II, from its biophysics, biochemistry and molecular structure to its role in physiology, evolution and artificial photosynthesis which, with the outstanding experience of Kimiyuki Satoh, led to the first comprehensive book on Photosystem II and the recognition given by this Special Issue of Photosynthesis Research.

Related publications:

Thomas J Wydrzynski and Kimiyuki Satoh (eds), Photosystem II: The Light-Driven Water: Plastoquinone Oxidoreductase. [view volume details]
Golbeck, JH. BOOK REVIEW: Thomas J. Wydrzynski and Kimiyuki Satoh (eds), Photosystem II: The Light-Driven Water: Plastoquinone Oxidoreductase. Photosynth Res (2007) 92:129–131 [view 100kb pdf]

Posted 20/09/2007

RSBS researchers make light work of awards

Three members of the Research School of Biological Sciences were honoured at the 14th International Congress of Photosynthesis (ISPR): Professor Jan Anderson from the Photobioenergetics Group received the ISPR Lifetime Achievement Award, to acknowledge her lifetime of outstanding contributions to understanding photosynthesis; Dr. Warwick Hillier also from the Photobioenergtics Group received the Robin Hill Award, which is given for outstanding investigations into physical aspects of the photosynthetic process by an early career scientist; and Dr. Ben Long from the Molecular Plant Physiology Group received the Best Poster Award by an Early Career Researcher. The Congress of nearly 900 participants met in Glasgow, Scotland , the 23rd – 27th July, 2007. The Congress meets once every three years and is a celebration of the achievements of the Photosynthetic Community. It provides a forum for the discussion of recent developments, current concepts and understanding of the photosynthetic process as well as relevant applications.

Professor Jan Anderson
International Society for Photosynthesis Research Lifetime Achievement Award

After graduating from the Otago University, New Zealand, Jan Anderson did her PhD with Nobel Prize Winner Melvin Calvin at UC, Berkeley. Her distinguished research at CSIRO, Plant Industry on the molecular organization and dynamic arrangement of the photosynthetic membranes of plants and the light regulation of photosynthetic processes provided a conceptual framework for understanding the structure and function of photosynthetic membranes at the molecular level. During her Plant Industry career of shedding light on photosynthesis, Jan often collaborated with RSBS scientists and was delighted to join PBE, RSBS 11 years ago.

Dr Warwick Hillier
International Society for Photosynthesis Research Robin Hill Award

The 2007 Hill Award was jointly given to Warwick Hillier of the RSBS and Junko Yano of the US Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for their outstanding contributions as young investigators into the physical aspects of the photosynthetic process. Upon completing his PhD at the ANU, Warwick took up a 4-year postdoctoral appointment in the Chemistry Department at Michigan State University where he applied advanced spectroscopic techniques to the study of the natural water splitting mechanism in photosynthesis. He retuned to Australia in 2003 and joined the RSBS faculty where he is now studying how to develop the natural water splitting mechanism to productively produce O2 and H2 in a clean, renewable fuel cycle. This area of research is summarized in the Molecular Biofuels website. He will be featured in the ABC’s New Inventors television program on October 3rd.

Posted 13/09/2007

What do academics do in labs all day? What is a career in research all about? What is a day in the life of a PhD student really like? These questions and many more were recently answered for a group of talented undergraduate students from Universities in Australia and New Zealand.

From July 3-July 5 the Research School of Biological Sciences hosted visiting students on a 3 day research experience - Frontiers of Biology. Twenty participants were selected from over 70 applicants, each successful applicant received a bursary that covered their travel, accommodation and meals for this special research showcase event.

To read more on Frontiers of Biology, go to the RSBS student page.

Posted 11/09/2007