What's On at UWA

MRI is an incredibly versatile imaging modality stemming from the wide range of approaches that can be applied to generate image contrast. While qualitative imaging is common in clinical MRI, increasingly quantitative methods capable of measuring molecular tissue properties are being exploited. In this seminar I will present an overview of my research focussing on the application of quantitative MRI approaches to measure and map the distribution of; 1) iron, fat and fibrosis in the body and 2) magnetic nanoparticles to enable cell tracking and biodistribution studies of therapeutic agents.

Please join us for this meeting of WA Flow, a Western Australian flow cytometry interest group. There will be presentations of applications, protocols, results, information and general discussion of current flow cytometry.

Three presentations: Dr Coral-Ann Almeida (IIID, Murdoch University) "Single cell sorts of CD8 T cell clones for HIV research", Kerryn Stoner and Rom Krueger (Pathwest, Royal Perth Hospital) "Minimal Residual Disease detection by Flow Cytometry in AML", and Irma Larma (WA Institute for Medical Research) "Back to Basics - Cell sorting: Principal and applications".

All welcome - refreshments provided.

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.

Dr Daniel Procissi, visiting from Chicago's Northwestern University, will be presenting a series of preclinical MRI experiments which he has conducted in different areas ranging from neurology and oncology to hybrid modality imaging (PET-MRI). This overview of imaging research will be discussed within a conceptual framework aimed at identifying the practical, technical and scientific issues that one needs to address when attempting to establish MR imaging as a reliable, reproducible and quantitative tool for biomedical and biological research.

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.

Associate Professor Mylne will describe a system that he established which allows the monitoring of the physical position of a gene within a nucleus by confocal microscopy. He will illustrate its use to monitor the dynamic changes in gene position for one particular Arabidopsis gene as it gets silenced by low temperature. The system allows monitoring a single gene's position in live whole plants.

Assoc. Prof. Mylne (PhD, Botany) worked at the John Innes Centre (2001-2005), using molecular genetics to study proteins that accelerate flowering in response to prolonged cold (vernalization). In 2006 he moved to the Division of Chemistry & Structural Biology at The Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB, UQ) where he held a QEII Fellowship (2008-2012) and was the inaugural John S. Mattick Fellow (2010-2012). In 2013 he joined the faculty at The University of Western Australia and took up an ARC Future Fellowship in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry and The ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology. His research interests are protein evolution and the molecular mechanisms underlying the biosynthesis of bioactive peptides.

Please join us for this meeting of WA Flow, a Western Australian flow cytometry interest group. There will be presentation of applications, protocols, results, information and general discussion of current flow cytometry.

The August meeting will be held in the Macdonald Lecture Theatre, Princess Margaret Hospital.

There will be some great research, clinical and core facility presentations: Ben Wylie "Dendritic cell subsets and CD4 T cell immunity in Melanoma"; Tracie Easter and Monica Kemp "Flow cytometry - a tool for immune deficiency testing: two paediatric case studies"; and Dr Bree Foley (topic to be confirmed).

All welcome, refreshments provided. Please RSVP for catering purposes.

How to get there: Use entrance 4 or Roberts Road, right next to the pedestrian crossing traffic lights (i.e. opposite ICHR and Perth Modern School). The lecture theatre is on the right of the entrance foyer. Light refreshments will be served in the foyer.

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.

W.A. has an economy that is highly dependent on mining and minerals processing. The state, which covers the western third of the Australian continent, has a population of only 2.3 million people (10% of Australia’s total), but is responsible for 46% of Australia’s total exports and 58% of mineral and energy exports. In 2012, there were 975 operating mines and 169 processing plants with more than 50 minerals mined in commercial quantities [1]. Over the last five years, demand from China, Korea and South East Asia has resulted in an state economy with an average annual growth of 4.4% and 15% business investment growth [2]. These mining operations may have many problems. Many of the ores may be unpredictably more difficult or costly to process or handle. As natural samples they can be complicated, they have multiple phases, with variations in particle size, substitution, order and morphology or contain trace phases that often have effects greater than their proportion in the materials would suggest. Until recently, many of these materials would have been examined only on the basis of their chemistry, usually by XRF or ICP-OES. The evolution of better and more flexible diffractometers, especially faster detectors and more robust analysis programs, has greatly reduced the instrument time and analyst time required and subsequently the cost of obtaining good XRD data. Mining and mineral processing companies that would have previously only analysed tens of samples by XRD, if any, can now analyse hundreds or even thousands of samples. Several past and potential future problems will be discussed where lab-based diffraction or synchrotron diffraction are a significant contributor to understanding the problem and providing solutions [1] Government of Western Australia, Dept of Mines and Petroleum. (2012) Western Australian Mineral and Petroleum Statistics Digest, 2011-2012. [2] Government of Western Australia, Dept of State Development. (2013) Western Australia – Economic Profile, January 2013

Please join us for this meeting of WA Flow, a Western Australian flow cytometry interest group. There will be presentations of applications, protocols, results, information and general discussion of current flow cytometry.

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.

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.

The ZEISS Xradia Versa family and ZEISS Xradia Ultra lab platforms offer a multi-lengthscale solution. State of the art X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning technology combined with highly specialized, proprietary X-ray optics deliver the highest performance lab-based 3D X-ray microscopes, providing a range of imaging modes from ~30 micron resolution all the way down to 50nm spatial resolution. The Xradia Versa uses patented X-ray detectors and a microscope turret of magnifying objective detectors for easy zooming. Scan mode from 30 micron resolution all the way down to 700 nm spatial resolution. The Xradia Ultra nanoscale X-ray microscope is the only commercially available X-ray microscope that utilizes synchrotron quality X-ray optics and provides true spatial resolution down to <50nm

ZEISS Xradia 520 Versa: The flagship product of the award-winning Xradia Versa family provides the most advanced and highest performing non-destructive, 3D imaging and analysis capabilities. Xradia 520 Versa extends the boundaries of non-destructive 3D imaging with advanced contrast tuning capabilities, extensive filtering options, and enhancements delivering greater accuracy and workflow. Xradia 520 Versa frees researchers to push the boundaries of lab-based imaging. With prominent facilities worldwide using non-destructive X-ray microscopy (XRM) to extend the use of valuable samples, the ZEISS Xradia Versa family proves a powerful component of a correlative microscopy solution. Xradia 520 Versa adds a host of innovations to ZEISS Xradia's industry-leading resolution, contrast and powerful advantages for conducting in situ studies under native or controlled conditions. The instrument delivers compositional contrast for better discernment between materials appearing nearly identical, faster time-to-results for time-sensitive applications, and superior ease-of-use for multi-user environments. Xradia Versa solutions are ideal for highly skilled users as well as busy imaging labs with diverse user needs and skillsets. Breakthrough applications for Xradia 520 Versa include compositional contrast in materials science, high aspect ratio tomography for semiconductor failure analysis and 4D studies of material evolution over time. Highlights include advanced contrast tuning capabilities, extensive filtering options, and faster time to results with higher throughput.

Knowledge about the morphology and chemical composition of heterogeneous materials on a sub-micrometer scale is crucial for the development of new material properties for highly specified applications. However, each analytical measuring technique has limitations, which may be overcome by their combination. Confocal microscopy has been used to reconstruct three-dimensional images of micro-objects by using a spatial pinhole to eliminate out-of focus light in specimens thicker than the focal plane. Raman spectroscopy on the other hand is able to determine the chemical compositions of materials. The confocal Raman microscope combines Raman spectroscopy with high resolution confocal microscopy. The discrimination of out of focus information used in confocal microscopy is particularly beneficial for confocal Raman imaging since it reduces the volume from which the Raman spectrum is collected. Due to the confocal principle, depth information from transparent materials can be easily obtained, leading to full three dimensional chemical reconstructions of the material’s composition. The combination of confocal Raman microscopy with SPM and true surface microscopy permits characterization of materials at submicron resolution, as well as on mm-rough surfaces across large areas. Examples from various fields of applications will be presented.

The Centre for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine is holding its Annual Research Symposium on Tuesday 15 April 2014 at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research from 8.45 am – 4.30 pm. The theme for the meeting is “At the cutting edge: New Developments in Regenerative Medicine” Professor Ed Stanley from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne will deliver the keynote presentation entitled: "Pluripotent stem cell models of human development and disease.” For a copy of the programme and to RSVP please contact Barbara Telfer at [email protected] Please RSVP by 5pm on Tuesday the 1 April 2014.

Many animals possess a magnetic sense, which they use as a type of biological GPS to navigate short or long distances. Despite a wealth of behavioural evidence for magnetoreception, the cellular mechanisms that must underlie such a sense await discovery. Dr Jeremy Shaw focuses on the use of cutting-edge optical, electron and X-ray microscopy techniques to explore the magnetoreception question and has contributed to new discoveries in this field with publications in the journals Nature and Current Biology. Dr Shaw’s research is now centred on the use of the honeybee Apis mellifera as a model system to search for this new sensory system and hopefully solve what is one of the great unsolved mysteries in biology.

To understand large-scale phenomena, such as ecosystem health or ore mineral deposition, researchers are increasingly looking at the chemical processes occurring at the nano-scale. Mass spectrometry traditionally requires material to be extracted in bulk from samples, at the expense of information about the complex spatial relationships of the individual components.

Nano-scale Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (NanoSIMS), however, allows chemical imaging and analysis to be performed at the sub-micron scale, in situ. NanoSIMS is a highly versatile technique, able to turn its hand to a broad range of applications. This seminar will highlight several novel applications, including mineral-fluid interactions, nutrient transport in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and how evidence of early life might be preserved in the rock record.

Biography

Matt Kilburn is a Professor in the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis at UWA, He read Planetary Science at University College London, gained a PhD from the University of Bristol in geochemistry, and then went on to postdoc positions at the Max Planck Society in Germany, and Oxford.

In 2006, Matt moved to UWA to lead the Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) group and head the Ion Probe Facility, which currently houses a CAMECA NanoSIMS 50 and an IMS 1280 large-radius ion microprobe. In 2014, the Facility will take delivery of a new $4M NanoSIMS 50L. Matt’s research revolves around developing SIMS applications across a wide range of disciplines, from biomedical research to nuclear safeguards.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

Viruses are the most abundant biological agents in the global oceans, with numbers typically averaging ten billion per litre. The ability of viruses to infect all organisms indicates they most likely play a central role in marine ecosystems. Corals form an obligate symbiotic relationship with the dinoflagellate genus Symbiodinium, upon which the coral relies heavily for nutrition and calcification. Disruption of this symbiosis can lead to loss of the symbiotic algae from their host and if the symbiosis cannot re-establish, death of the coral colony. Viruses that target the algal symbiont have been reported and we examined whether Symbiodinium in culture is host to virus(es) that switches to a lytic infection under stress, such as UV exposure or elevated temperature. Analysis using techniques including flow cytometry and TEM, revealed prevalent viral activity. This talk will present recent results and potential for future development of probes for rapid detection of viruses in field samples to help monitor and assess the role of viruses in coral and reef health.

The 8th meeting of WA Flow – the Western Australian Flow Cytometry Interest Group - will be held on Tuesday 1st July in the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis. We have a couple of really interesting talks lined up! Assoc Prof Kathy Heel will show us how she and her team are using their exciting imaging flow cytometer to clinically translate laboratory cancer research. Then Dr Kara Yopak will present a fascinating application of flow and imaging cytometry for measuring the brain cells of fishes and sharks! WA Flow is a diverse, open and inclusive group of scientists and scientists-in-training who share in interest in measuring cells. Scientists from core facilities, academic research groups and clinical diagnostic facilies meet every second month for presentations of applications, protocols, results, information and general discussion of current cytometry. All current CMCA flow cytometry users should attend. ALL welcome - refreshments provided.

This will be the 9th International Conference on the Applications of Stable Isotope Techniques to Ecological Studies (IsoEcol 9). The conference will be held 3-8 August 2014 at The University Club, on the campus of The University of Western Australia, adjacent to the beautiful Swan River.



IsoEcol 9 will bring together an exciting mix of researchers from universities, industry and government with interests in the development and application of stable isotope techniques to the ecological sciences. IsoEcol traditionally includes a mid-conference field trip day and is generally run as a single common session facilitating cross-disciplinary discussion. In addition to great science, Western Australia offers you a memorable array of pre- and post- conference touring options to excite and replenish your ecological spirit in a must see global biodiversity hotspot!