What's On at UWA

The primary transcripts must then undergo extensive processing, including the maturation of 5’ and 3’ termini, RNA-editing and the splicing of many group-II-type introns (the precise number varying by species), which lie mainly within complex I subunits but also disrupt the coding-regions of several genes encoding ribosomal proteins. The splicing of these introns is therefore essential for the expression of the coding sequences they interrupt, and thus for respiratory activity. Yet, despite the importance of proteins that influence mitochondrial gene-expression, functions have been established for only a handful of such proteins in plants. In non-plant systems, the splicing of group-II introns is facilitated by proteins encoded within the introns themselves (Maturases, Mat’s). Yet, the plant mitochondrial introns are degenerated and also lost their intron-encoded ORF. It is thus anticipated that their splicing in the organelles requires the participation of nuclear gene products. In addition, the roles of nuclear-encoded factors in mitochondrial RNA-metabolism may provide means to link organellar gene expression and function to other cellular responses to energy state, environmental stimuli, and/or developmental cues. However, the precise functions still remain largely unknown for many of these proteins in plant mitochondria. By using biochemical and genetic approaches we established the roles of different proteins in the splicing of many of the mitochondrial introns in plants. These are diverse in origin and presumably in mechanism. Defects in interactions between this class of proteins and their RNA partners have been linked to growth and developmental defects, which include reduced germination, retarded growth phenotypes and cytoplasmic male sterility.

The course is designed for people with little or no knowledge of statistics. It will be spread over three days covering material ranging from means and standard deviations to simple linear regression, and basic ANOVA. Some basic categorical data analysis will be included with the emphasis throughout being placed on applications rather than theory. The statistical package SPSS will be used to illustrate ideas demonstrated, however this course is aimed at enabling an understanding of basic statistics.

Come and hear prominent UWA, national and international speakers give varied and fascinating insights into Innovative Discoveries in Science through Advanced Mass Spectrometry. A full list of speakers and seminar titles is available on request to [email protected]

You are invited to attend this live demonstration of the new Hirox KH-8700. This will be an overview of the system and demonstration including the 3D rotary lenses, multifocal functions and a variety of unique lenses and adaptors. All are welcome to attend.

We hypothesize that the massive changes in C4/C3 related gene expression are controlled by a subset of transcriptional regulators, which are essential for C4 photosynthesis establishment and/or maintenance. We analyze the Cleome genus, which includes closely related C4 (Cleome gynandra) and C3 (Cleome hassleriana) species and exhibits phylogenetic proximity to the model species Arabidopsis thaliana.In order to elucidate the regulatory network behind the C4 syndrome in Cleome we are employing two strategies: (i) A single candidate gene approach derived from a global comparative analysis of transcriptome data sets of C4/C3 species (including Cleome hassleriana and gynandra) generated by 454 and Solexa sequencing, which targets will be further described biochemically and genetically (e.g. via over-expressor and knock-out lines in Arabidopsis thaliana) and (ii) co-expression analysis for the identification of the regulatory modules which will include a developmental gradient of photosynthetic and a subset of non-photosynthetic tissues.

"Our research focuses upon how the virulent bacterial phytopathogen Pseudomonas syringae establishes disease in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. P. syringae delivers a suite of ~ 30 effector proteins into the plant cell." Detailed abstract available [email protected]

Join us in an afternoon of information and debate about one of agriculture's hottest current topics: Prominent industry leaders will discuss foreign ownership of Australian agricultural land and agri-business, its challenges, opportunities and its potential impacts on farming families and agricultural industries. For program details and speakers click on the link below.

The course is designed for people with knowledge of basic statistics who want to learn more about regression and analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website cas.maths.uwa.edu.au. Please register online.

The 3MT competition challenges research students to give a dynamic and engaging presentation about their research and its significance in a way that can be understood by everybody. The audience will select the "People's Choice" winner.

The course is designed for people with knowledge of basic statistics who want to learn more about how to analyse binary or survival data.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

Artemis Kitsios is currently a Masters candidate with SymbioticA, School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, and the School of Environmental Systems Engineering UWA. She will speak about her interdisciplinary research project – Ecosystem complexities: an interdisciplinary study of stress, resilience and change. This project examines the complexities of aquatic ecology, with particular attention to resilience and the role of the human. The project aims to examine, simulate, and visualise ecosystem processes that are not easily translated into human scale perception/comprehension and hence establish greater understanding of the fragility and importance of aquatic ecologies

Artemis Kitsios studied environmental engineering at UWA (2001 - 2004), visual art at the Central Institute of Technology (2007 – 2010) and before beginning the Masters in Biological Arts, completed the Art and Life Manipulation course with SymbioticA (2009). She has worked in water resource management, ecology and conservation locally and internationally for the last 10 years and has exhibited artworks in Perth, Melbourne and Barcelona.

What makes a healthy start to life? This is the single overarching question and focus of the NRCD, a New Zealand government-funded Centre of Research Excellence, bringing together leading scientists from six organisations across New Zealand to answer this question. Acting Director, Prof Hugh Blair, is leading several projects investigating the effects of fetal programming on later life productivity in sheep and cattle and the possibility that these programming effects may be transmitted between generations. His public lecture examines how this applies to sheep, focusing on how a mother's eating habits affect her daughters' milk production.

The first Soil&Water Seminar for Semester 2, 2012, will be Assoc. Prof. Louise Barton from SEE(UWA)on Weds Aug 8. All welcome!

TITLE: “Assessing strategies for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from wheat production: Role of grain legumes and soil liming.”

ABSTRACT: Utilising inorganic nitrogen (N) fertilizer greatly influences greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agricultural production systems in semi-arid regions. Our previous research demonstrated that the production and use of urea accounted for 70% of the total GHG emissions from wheat production in a semi-arid region of south-western Australia. Greenhouse gases were emitted during the manufacture of the urea (34% of total emissions), as well as following its application to land via carbon dioxide (CO2) hydrolysis (27%), and soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions (9%). A large proportion of N2O emissions occurred between growing seasons, and following summer rainfall events, rather than in response to N fertilizer applications, with nitrification considered to be the source of these losses.

Lowering N inputs is not considered to be an option for decreasing the contribution of N fertilizer to total GHG emissions from cropped soils in south-western Australia, as application rates are typically low. Instead, CO2 emissions resulting from N fertilizer production and urea hydrolysis could be partly mitigated by incorporating plants that fix atmospheric N (e.g. grain legumes) into the crop rotation, decreasing the reliance on synthetic N fertilizer. Furthermore, increasing soil pH by applying lime may be an approach to decreasing N2O emitted in response to summer rainfall events if nitrification, rather than denitrification, is the main soil biological source of the emissions. Consequently this seminar will present findings from a recently completed field-based study investigating if including a grain legume (lupin) in a cropping rotation, or increasing the soil pH via liming, decreased the GHG emissions from wheat production in south-western Australia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Louise Barton is a soil scientist who has been researching nitrogen cycling in various landuses for the past 17 years. She is currently an Associate Professor at The University of Western Australia, and leads the Soil Biology Group in the School of Earth & Environment. Her current interests include measuring soil N2O emissions from cropping soils in the Western Australian grainbelt, and investigating the contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions. Louise completed her undergraduate degree at The University of Western Australia in 1991, and her PhD from the University of Waikato in 1998

Glowing plants, drug-delivering artificial cells, smell-changing bacteria, propelling mouse tissues… Today, new kinds of biological designs are increasingly gaining public awareness and shifting biological imagination towards new horizons. Next to scientists and engineers, do-it-yourself biologists are claiming crucial roles as the hackers, artists, designers, cultural theorists, and entrepreneurs of the biophilic era. As Synthetic Biology is becoming the go-to-discipline to those who are interested in the biochemical design space, engineering principles become the driving force behind designed biologies.

But what do we mean by “design” when we talk about biological design?

In this two-part talk, Orkan Telhan will trace the long history of biological design rather quickly through a series of designed and commercialized biological artifacts and offer a more discursive view on the evolution of the biologically designable beyond specific disciplinary agendas. Secondly, Telhan will reflect on the outcomes of his research residency at SymbioticA and briefly discuss his current project on “Biosynthesis and the Futures of Sandalwood.”

Current SymbioticA resident Orkan Telhan is an interdisciplinary artist, designer and researcher whose investigations focus on the design of interrogative objects, interfaces, and media, engaging with critical issues in social, cultural, and environmental responsibility. Telhan is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts - Emerging Design Practices at University of Pennsylvania, School of Design. Telhan is working towards his PhD in Design and Computation at MIT School of Architecture and Planning. He was part of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory. He studied Media Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo and theories of media and representation, visual studies and graphic design at Bilkent University, Ankara. Telhan's individual and collaborative work has been exhibited in a number of venues including Ars Electronica, ISEA, LABoral, Archilab, Architectural Association, Architectural League/ NYC, and the MIT Museum.

UWA opens up the whole campus to the public.

Come and find out about the courses on offer, career options, scholarship opportunities, our valuable research, community programs and facilities.

There's also residential college tours, hands-on activities, live music and entertainment, and plenty of fun activities for the whole family.

Come along to the Working in WA State Government information session. The session is open to students from all years and all disciplines. You will be surprised at the opportunities available in the public service.

Bookings on CareerHub – http://uwa.careerhub.com.au

The ‘science pipeline’ in Australia is under threat because not enough budding scientists are moving through from school to university to science-based jobs. The aim of this research was to retrospectively survey current Australian and New Zealand scientists to ascertain why they chose to study science. The quantitative data from 722 respondents showed that, unsurprisingly, the main reasons were that they were interested in science and they were good at science. Secondary school science classes and one particular science teacher also were found to be important factors. Of more interest are their anecdotes about the challenges of becoming a scientist, some of which will be shared in this presentation.

In flowering plants, mitochondrial transcriptomes contain some 300–500 RNA editing sites and chloroplast transcriptomes approximately 30 editing sites. In lycophytes, RNA editing is particularly abundant with more than 2100 editing sites in mitochondrial mRNAs and rRNAs of the spikemoss Selaginella moellendorffii. In contrast, only 11 sites are identified in mitochondria of the model plant Physcomitrella patens, making this moss an attractive model for functional studies. Pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins with unique carboxyterminal extensions (E/DYW) encoded by extended nuclear gene families in plants have previously been characterized as specificity factors recognizing editing sites. PPR proteins with the DYW domain in particular were shown to perfectly correlate with the presence of RNA editing in evolution. Our DYW-PPR gene knockout studies in Physcomitrella will contribute to identify the full set of nuclear specificity factors addressing all editing sites in a plant mitochondrial transcriptome. Most surprisingly, we recently also identified DYW-type PPR proteins in the heterolobosean protist Naegleria gruberi. Interestingly, we were now able to identify C-to-U editing in the mitochondrial transcriptome of this protist, which is phylogenetically separated from the plant lineage by more than 1 billion years of evolution.

Currently at University of Queensland, Dr Mylne will speak about his past, current and future plans for his Fellowship at UWA. Welcome Dr Mylne! "At UWA I intend to focus on three areas; 1) study the various genetic ‘innovations’ that create these ultra-stable peptides, 2) hone in on the in vivo biochemical process that produce such biomedically relevant peptides; and 3) develop a new biological system to discover the elusive biochemical targets of important anti-malarials drugs." DETAILED CV AVAILABLE !!! email [email protected]

CBSM aims to promote biological science in Western Australia by encouraging the interaction of scientists, students and industry representatives from all aspects of life science.

The meeting is designed to provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and expertise to keep the life sciences in WA at the cutting edge. This annual meeting includes plenary presentations by national and international scientists and in 2012 will incorporate concurrent specialist symposia each with its own keynote speaker and session of local senior scientists.

CBSM is also geared toward students and the development of students among their peers. Several sessions are set aside for student presentations and for many it represents their first chance to present their work in a conference setting. These honours and post-graduate students work in universities, research institutes, and industry around Western Australia. In this way CBSM offers a unique “snapshot” of what is happening in local biological science and now attracts 250-300 delegates every year, with nearly 40 oral presentations, over 70 scientific posters and 30 trade booths. Check out the program at www.cbsmwa.org.au/program.

So where will you be on Friday the 24th of August? Join us at the University Club, The University of Western Australia for CBSM 2012!

www.cbsmwa.org.au - [email protected]