What's On at UWA

Special talk during Honey Week 2013

SIMS is one of the most powerful characterization techniques for materials, chemistry, physics, and biology because of its unique capabilities to provide trace sensitivity (ppm to sub-ppb range) and excellent depth (as good as 1 nm) and lateral resolution (< 1 µm for ion microscopes and 30 nm for ion microprobes). In particular, it has become an indispensable characterization technique in the fields of marine and biological science which require analytical techniques capable of probing small areas and detecting impurities at low concentrations. A succinct review on the basic principles of SIMS, will be given, followed by a description of the current status on the SIMS technique. The principles of SIMS data acquisition will be illustrated as well as an evaluation of procedures to achieve useful information on the elemental, isotopic, and molecular composition of the respective samples. Some most intriguing results of SIMS studies in marine and biological science will be reviewed (including studies of diatom and otolith samples) and a comparison of SIMS with other micro-analytical techniques - such as AES, XPS, EPMA, TOF-SIMS, laser ablation ICP-MS, SNMS, PIXE and RBS will be made.

Statistical meta-analysis deals with a variety of sophisticated statistical methods to efficiently combine the results of several studies that have a common target. In this course, we will describe the basic concepts of effect size for continuous measurements as well as qualitative attributes, combination of tests and estimates of effect size, tests for homogeneity of effect sizes, fixed versus random effects model of meta-analysis, combination of Gallup polls, meta-analysis of binary data, meta-regression, and publication bias.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) based techniques have revolutionized chemical characterization of materials and non-invasive in-vivo diagnostics, with pioneers garnering Nobel Prizes in Chemistry for NMR spectroscopy, and in Medicine for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This seminar will begin with an overview of my experience in MR. Examples will be included from solid-state NMR spectroscopy, micro-MRI (hydrogen fuel cells, rheo-NMR), small animal MRI, and human MRI. In the latter portion of the seminar I will present some recent and interesting developments from the literature that aim to achieve novel MRI contrast linked to underlying micro-structure or biochemistry.

The rules and details of UWA's Three Minute Thesis Competition will be described, and guidance will be given on how to present a talk suitable for this event. Doctoral and Masters Researchers, ECRs and academics within 7 years of PhD completion are eligible to compete.

LIWA invites you to a free seminar on: "New approaches to prevent airway inflammation in early CF lung disease – from mummies to MetaGex" by Clin/Prof Stephen Stick, Head, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children; School of Paediatrics and Child Health, UWA. A light lunch will be served from 12.00pm with a 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation.

This masterclass for doctoral and early career doctoral researchers will focus on the development of plans for achieving research impact through collaborations and the two-way exchange of knowledge between the university and a range of external stakeholders.

This course covers techniques that can be used to analyse data with continuous and categorical variables. The course will begin with simple linear regression and then proceed with approaches that can be used with more than two variables such as multiple regression. ANOVA with interactions and blocking will also be covered. The course will end with techniques that address the analysis of binary or ordinal variables.

Subsidised fees are available for UWA Graduate Research Students.

Come and find out about our undergraduate and postgraduate courses, career options, scholarship opportunities, our valuable research, community programs and facilities.

There's also residential college tours, hands-on activities, live music, entertainment, and plenty of fun activities for the whole family as we celebrate our 100th birthday.

We are investigating insect adaptations for plant sap utilization from the perspective of molecular physiology, with the goal to identify molecular targets to control pest species.

Part of The Bayliss Seminar Series http://www.chembiochem.uwa.edu.au/research/seminars

During the past decade, computational chemistry has had an increasingly important impact on almost all branches of chemistry as a new approach for solving chemical problems at the molecular level and in obtaining information that is not accessible by experiment (e.g. in investigations involving transient, reactive, toxic, rare, or hypothetical species).

Theoretical methods have now been refined to the point where, for medium-sized systems with up to ~50 non-hydrogen atoms, they can determine very accurate molecular structures, reaction energies, barrier heights, spectroscopic constants and electrical properties.

First-principles thermochemical methods, such as Wn theories,1 combine large-scale electronic structure calculations with sophisticated extrapolation techniques to achieve unprecedented accuracies in thermochemical predictions. I will briefly review the Wn theories and show that they can reproduce the most accurate experimental thermochemical data with a 2&#963; uncertainty of under 1 kJ mol–1.1 For spectroscopic constants, Wn methods afford predictions with near-spectroscopic accuracy (i.e. 2&#963; uncertainty of ~1 cm–1).2 I will also present recent theoretical advances that extend the applicability of these theories to larger systems.3 Finally, some illustrative applications to water clusters,4 water-catalyzed proton-transfers,5 DNA bases,3 amino acids,6 tetrapeptides,7 corannulene8 and C60 will be given.

Dr Gary Cowin was awarded a BSc (HONS), majoring in synthetic organic chemistry, from the University of New England followed by a PhD investigating renal metabolism from the University of Queensland. Dr Gary Cowin is the Facility Fellow for the Queensland Node of the National Imaging Facility (NIF) as part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS), based at the Centre for Advanced Imaging, University of Queensland. He is an MR physicist undertaking development and implementation of research programs on a range of research (Bruker) and clinical (Siemens) MRI systems and multimodality imaging, MRI/PET/CT, for plant, animal and human research. Specific areas of research include prostate, liver, spinal cord and development of simultaneous MRI/PET imaging. The MRI/PET system is the World's first commercial prototype that enables simultaneous acquisition of MRI and PET images for preclinical research. This MRI/PET system is a flagship instrument of the National Imaging Facility.

A world recognised specialist in the field of ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions, Paul’s research interests focus on the coevolution and ecology of host-parasite interactions.

As head of the Experimental Ecology research group at ETH, his pioneering works on host-parasite interactions paved the way for innovative research worldwide.

The trypanosome Crithidia bombi infects several species of Bombus (bumblebees); here, we focus on B. terrestris. The parasite is spread by contacts on flowers and evidence shows that the infecting populations in the hosts are very prevalent and highly variable. At the same time, the presumably relevant genetic complements of the hosts are highly conserved. One alternative defence strategy is by variable gene expression and the synergistic actions of effector molecules. The concept and evidence for such a process are discussed.

Professor Stephen Hill studied Pharmacology in Bristol (BSc, 1976) and then undertook PhD studies in the Department of Pharmacology in Cambridge (PhD 1979). After postdoctoral studies in Cambridge (1979-1981) he was appointed to a lecturer position in the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. He joined the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology (now the School of Life Sciences) in 1984 and was subsequently promoted to Reader (1989) and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology (1995). In 1997 he became Director of the Institute of Cell Signalling and then Head of the School of Biomedical Sciences in 2008. He has published over 160 papers and his research has concentrated mainly on the molecular pharmacology of G protein-coupled receptors and cross-talk between intracellular signaling cascades. Currently, the emphasis of his work is on the study of single ligand-receptor interactions in membrane microdomains using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. He is a founding director of the University of Nottingham spin-out company CellAura Technologies Ltd that provides fluorescent ligands to the scientific community. He has served on the Editorial Boards of the British Journal of Pharmacology and Current Opinion on Pharmacology. He was Vice-President (Meetings) of the British Pharmacological Society (2004-2006) and was the BPS Sandoz (Novartis) Prize winner in 1987 and the BPS Australasian Lecturer in 2006. He was elected a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society in 2004. According to ISI, he is one of the top 250 pre-eminent individual researchers in pharmacology as measured by citations to their work (www.ISIhighlycited.com). He is currently Chair of the MRC Molecular & Cellular Medicine Research Board (having been a previous member between 2006-2011; Deputy Chair from 2008) and has previously served on the Wellcome Trust Physiology & Pharmacology Panel and the Wellcome Trust Career Development Interview Panel (both as Deputy Chair).

A Joint Seminar with speakers from ARC CoE Plant Energy Biology (UWA) and Kings Park Botanic Gardens & Parks Authority labs.

The Seminar: Reprogramming adult somatic cells to different cell types has opened a whole new window of possibilities for cell therapy in degenerative diseases. In our lab we are designing strategies to create clinical grade myoblasts precursors to be used in clinical cell therapy and as disease models, following two different strategies: differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells or by direct transdifferentiation from adult somatic cells.

The Speaker: Dr. Belen Alvarez-Palomo is senior scientist at the group of Dr. Michael edel, at the Department of Physiological Science, at the Univerisity of Barcelona in Spain. Dr. Alvarez-Palomo got her PhD by the University of Barcelona in the year 2000 working on skeletal muscle turnover in cancer cachexia, and later she performed a postdoctoral stay in The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, working on cell migration, and a second postdoc in Instituto Municipal de Investigacion Medica in Barcelona, working with the regulation of Mesenchymal to Epithelial transition.

“The utilisation of transcriptomics and breathomics in airway Diseases”

Prof Peter J. Sterk Head of Research, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam

“Hedgehog pathway: a novel target for mesothelioma”

Prof Steve Mutsaers Head, Tissue Repair Unit, Lung Institute of WA

“Innovative strategies for airways disease”

A/Prof Yuben Moodley Head, Stem Cell Research Unit, Lung Institute of WA

“Development of antisense oligonucleotides for asthma”

Dr Svetlana Baltic Unit Manager, Molecular Genetics Unit, Lung Institute of WA

The Seminar: Basement membrane (BM) composition varies with both blood vessel and with tissue type. Of all BM components, the laminin family shows the greatest variability and represents the biological active component of BMs, interacting with a wide repertoire of integrin and non-integrin receptors to control functions such as vessel integrity and permeability. Microvessels of the central nervous system (CNS) have a unique composition of cellular and extracellular matrix layers that collectively constitute the blood-brain barrier. In addition to the endothelial cell monolayer and its underlying BM, cerebral microvessels are ensheathed by astrocyte endfeet and leptomeningeal cells, which contribute to a second BM, the so-called parenchymal BM as it delineates the border to the brain parenchyma. While considerable information is available on the cellular constitutents of the CNS microvessels and their contribution to the BBB, little is known about the BM layers. Our work has shown that endothelial and parenchymal BMs of CNS vessels are structurally and functionally distinct, and has highlighted their importance in the restricted permeability characteristic of the CNS microvessels. In particular, laminin isoforms are heterogeneously localized along the length of the endothelial BM of microvessels and play an important role in defining sites of high and low penetrability by infiltrating cells, such as extravasating leukocytes during inflammation1. In addition, endothelial laminins impact on endothelial stiffness and the ability of the vessels to detect and respond to shear. By contrast, ECM components of the parenchymal border confer tensile strength and as consequence penetration of this border requires focal matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 activity2. Data will be presented on the biochemical differences of BMs of CNS microvessels, and how vascular laminins and MMP-2 and MMP-9 act to control vascular integrity in the context of leukocyte extravasation1.

1. Wu, C., F. Ivars, P. Anderson, R. Hallmann, D. Vestweber, P. Nilsson, H. Robenek, K. Tryggvason, J. Song, E. Korpos, K. Loser, S. Beissert, E. Georges-Labouesse, & L.M. Sorokin. 2009. Nat Med. 15, 519-27 2. Agrawal, S., Anderson, P., Durbeej, M., van Rooijen, N., Ivars, F., Opdenakker, G., & Sorokin, L. M. 2006. J. Exp. Med. 203, 1007-1019

The Speaker: Lydia Sorokin obtained her PhD from the Physiology Department at the University of Western Australia in receptor-mediated endocytosis and carried out her first postdoctoral position at the Friedrich-Miescher laboratory of the Max-Planck Society in Tübingen, Germany, where she commenced her work on the extracellular matrix. She has spent the last 22 years in Germany and Sweden and is currently professor and director of Pathobiochemistry at the Westfälische Wilhelms University in Münster, Germany. Her interests are the biochemistry, ultrastructure and function of basement membranes, with an emphasis on vascular basement membranes and inflammation, and the role of the ECM in secondary lymphoid organs

WA Flow is back for 2014, with our first meeting kicking off on Tuesday 4th March at 5 pm in the Seminar Room G24 at the Perkins Institute for Medical Research. The first meeting of the year will be a report back from delegates of the 36th Australasian Cytometry Society (formerly the Australasian Flow Cytometry Group) Meeting which took place in Wellington, NZ in December. Presenters will report on the exciting new developments in Research, Clinical and Core Technology streams of the conference. We are also developing an exciting program of WA Flow events for the rest of the year!

The WA Flow group is an open group and is a collaboration of all the research institutions and clinical flow laboratories in Western Australia. BD have kindly offered to support the WA Flow Group meetings and will be providing light refreshments and catering for our meetings (hopefully this will entice you to come and network at the post-meeting refreshments!). We meet on the first Tuesday, every second month. All CMCA flow users should attend.