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- Research higher degree (PhD) studentInstitute for Molecular Bioscience
- Senior Research FellowInstitute for Molecular Bioscience
- PhD studentInstitute for Molecular Bioscience
- Postdoctoral Research FellowInstitute for Molecular Bioscience
Centre for Solar Biotechnology
Director
Professor Ben Hankamer
Professorial Research FellowInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:Centre for Solar Biotechnology: Prof Ben Hankamer is the founding director of the Solar Biofuels Consortium (2007) and Centre for Solar Biotechnology (2016) which is focused on developing next generation microalgae systems. These systems are designed to tap into the huge energy resource of the sun (>2300x global energy demand) and capture CO2 to produce a wide-range of products. These include solar fuels (e.g. H2 from water, oil, methane and ethanol), foods (e.g. health foods) and high value products (e.g. vaccines produced in algae). Microalgae systems also support important eco-services such as water purification and CO2 sequestration. The Centre is being launched in 2016/2017 and includes approximately 30 teams with skills ranging from genome sequencing through to demonstration systems optimsation and accompanying techno-economis and life cycle analysis. The Centre teams have worked extensively with industry.
Structural Biology: The photosynthetic machinery is the biological interface of microalgae that taps into the huge energy resource of the sun, powers the biosphere and produces the atmospheric oxygen that supports life on Earth. My team uses high resolution single particle analysis and electron tomography to solve the intricate 3D architecture of the photosynthetic machinery to enable structure guided design of high efficiency microalgae cell lines and advanced artificial solar fuel systems.
Body:Highlights
Professor Ben Hankamer trained in applied biochemistry in Liverpool before exploring his interest in the development of environmental solutions to re-green deserts at the Desert Research Centre in Israel.
He has a keen interest in environmental protection and climate change. He completed his Masters in plant biotechnology at Wye College, London University before completing his PhD in structural biology. He wanted to understand how plants catch the sunlight and CO2 and use these to produce the food, fuel and atmospheric oxygen which supports life on Earth. He discovered his research passion listening to a talk at the Royal Society in London on using algae to make hydrogen fuel from light and water, and it has been a major research focus ever since.
The Centre for Solar Biotechnology that he now directs develops advanced algae technologies for the production fuels, foods as well as a range of high value products including peptide therapeutics.
He was a recipient of an Eisenhower Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to the United States for seven weeks and engage with 2-3 industry partners per day. He is now the Director of the Centre for Solar Biotechnology at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience.
His research focus is solar biotechnology and structural biology. He is designing high-efficiency microalgae systems to capture solar energy and CO2 to make a range of products including food and fuel. By expanding our photosynthetic capacity on non-arable land, he believes we can harness the Sun's energy to fuel the world ‘s future energy needs.
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Deputy Director
Deputy Director (EU)
Professor Olaf Kruse
Chair of Algae Biotechnology & BioenergyBielefeld University (Germany)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Deputy Director (US)
Professor Matthew Posewitz
ProfessorDepartment of Chemistry, Colorado School of Mines (USA)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Chief investigators (International)
Professor Peter Nixon
Professor of BiochemistryFaculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London (UK)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Michael Hippler
ProfessorInstitute of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, University of Münster (Germany)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Thomas Happe
ProfessorDepartment of Plant Biochemistry, Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Henning Stahlberg
ProfessorBiozentrum, University of Basel (Switzerland)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Associate Professor Christoph Gerle
Associate ProfessorInstitute for Protein Research, Osaka University (Japan)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Dr Mike Packer
Senior Research Scientist - Algal BiotechnologyCawthron Institute (New Zealand)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Christiane Funk
Professor of BiochemistryDept of Chemistry, Umeå University (Sweden)Researcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Professor Ute Marx
School of EngineeringPforzheim University (Germany)Researcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Chief investigators (IMB)
Professor Glenn King
NHMRC Leadership Fellow and Group LeaderInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Body:Highlights
Professor Glenn King is a biochemist and structural biologist whose expertise lies in translating venom-derived peptides into human drugs and bioinsecticides. His lab maintains the most extensive collection of venoms in the world, which includes venoms from more than 600 species of venomous spiders, scorpions, centipedes and assassin bugs.
Professor King’s primary focus is on the development of drugs to treat three pervasive nervous system disorders: chronic pain, epilepsy, and stroke. His lab is working closely with several pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for clinical use.
Professor King has also charted new territory in the field of agriculture by developing venom peptides as eco-friendly bioinsecticides. Vestaron Corporation, the company that he founded, will begin selling these bioinsecticides in the U.S. market in 2017.
Mentorship is important to Professor King, and he is enthusiastically committed to training the next generation of biological scientists. To date he has trained 30 PhD students and 24 postdoctoral scientists, with 10 lab alumni having gone on to independent academic positions.
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Professor Rob Capon
Professorial Research Fellow - GLInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:My research group specializes in the detection, isolation, identification and evaluation of biologically active small molecules from Nature (natural products). We acquire valuable knowledge on how and why natural products are made, and apply this knowledge to better understand living systems, and solve important scientific and societal challenges.
To achieve these goals we have established specialist capabilities that extend across;
Microbiology – the isolation, characterization and cultivation of bacterial and fungal strains.
Chemistry – the extraction and fractionation of natural extracts, the purification, chemical and spectroscopic characterization, and structure elucidation of natural products, and the use of synthetic and medicinal chemistry to explore bioactive scaffolds.
Biology – to evaluate extracts and natural products against an array of bioassays, leading to new human pharmaceuticals that target such indications as infectious and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, pain and epilepsy, as well as new animal health products and new crop protection agents.
Body:Highlights
Professor Rob Capon is a natural products chemist. He is a master of interrogating the molecular diversity of the natural world and applying it to society’s most pressing social and economic problems. He goes out into the natural world, detects biologically active molecules from living things, then isolates, identifies and evaluates them. Most importantly, he is committed to finding a use for them. His mantra for commercialization is ‘forced failure', in other words, “if you can break it, you won’t make it”. With the enormous untapped potential of natural products, he doesn’t like to waste time. He works quickly to “break or make” hypotheses, to focus resources on those molecules that are worthy of investment.
Professor Capon leads a group of researchers that are responsible for assembling a world-class molecule library, which along with the Australian collection of microbes housed at IMB, is used to discover new drugs. For Professor Capon, the most rewarding aspect of his work is the ability to dip into the molecular resource in the Australian environment, extract the chemistry and use it to improve our understanding of the natural world, and solve important problems.
He applies his research methodology to human health, animal health, crop protection, and environmental protection. He collaborates broadly in each of these areas.
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Professor David Craik
UQ Laureate Fellow - GLInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:David Craik (AO, FRS, FAA) is in the Centre for Chemistry and Drug Discovery at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Australia. He discovered the cyclotide family of circular proteins and has characterized the structures of many animal toxins including conotoxins from cone snail venoms. He heads a research team of 35 researchers whose current work focuses on applications of circular proteins, drugs in plants, toxins and NMR in drug design.
He is author of over 810 scientific papers, including 14 in Nature publications (Nature/Nature Communications/Nature Neuoroscience/Nature Structural Biology/Nature Chemical Biology/Nature Chemistry/Scientific Reports/Nature Protocols, 1 in Science, 12 in PNAS, 9 in JACS, 3 in Chemical Reviews, and 16 in Angewandte Chemie. He has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, appointed as an Officer (AO) of the Order of Australia and has received numerous awards for his research, including the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award from the American Chemical Society (2011), Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research (2014), GlaxoSmithKline Award for Research Excellence (2014), the Vincent du Vigneaud Award from the American Peptide Society (2015),the FAOBMB Award for Research Excellence (2015) and the Cathay Award from the Chinese Peptide Society (2018). He received the Australian Academy of Science David Craig Medal in 2023. He is an Honorary Professor of Jinan University, Guangzhou and has an Honorary Doctorate from Kalmar University in Sweden.
Biography
David Craik obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and undertook postdoctoral studies at Florida State and Syracuse Universities before taking up a lectureship at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1983. He was appointed Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Head of School in 1988. He moved to University of Queensland in 1995 to set up a new biomolecular NMR, held an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (2015-2020) and is currently a NHMRC Fellow, as well as Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Peptide and Protein Science.
Key Discoveries
David Craik has made discoveries of new classes of proteins, generated new knowledge on their structure and function, and used this information to design and chemically re-engineer new classes of protein-based drug leads and agricultural pest control agents. In particular, his major achievements are:
- the discovery of cyclotides, the largest known family of circular proteins. As well as a circular backbone, cyclotides contain a knotted arrangement of cross-linking disulfide bonds, making them remarkably stable. His discovery of these proteins was sparked in part from anecdotal reports of medicinal practices in Africa where women make a tea from the plant Oldenlandia affinis by boiling it in water and sipping it during labour to accelerate child birth. He determined the structure of the bioactive component of this medicinal tea and found that it had an unprecedented head-to-tail cyclic peptide backbone combined with a cystine knot.
- the first structural and functional characterizations of prototypic circular proteins in higher organisms - Professor Craik was one of the first to recognize that other families of ribosomally synthesized cyclic peptides exist. As examples from bacteria and animals emerged, Professor Craik was at the forefront of their structural characterization, reporting the first structures of theta-defensins from animals and the threaded lasso peptide microcin J25 from bacteria, as well as new examples of cyclic peptides from plants.
- the development of artificially cyclized peptide toxins as drug leads – he developed an orally active peptide that is 100 times more potent than the leading clinically used drug for neuropathic pain.
Research Training
Professor Craik has trained more than 70 PhD students. He was awarded UQ's Research Supervision Excellence Award in 2007 on the basis of his mentoring and innovations in postgraduate training, including his "writing retreats" to mentor students and postdocs on science writing skills. He received the Institute for Molecular Bioscience Individual Leadership Award in 2019. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Kalmar University, Sweden for his contributions to international student exchange programs, and is an Honorary Professor of Jinan University, Guangzhou.
Professional Activities
Professor Craik founded and chaired the 1st, 2nd and 3rd International Conferences on Circular Proteins (2009, 2012 and 2015) and was on the Scientific Program Committee for ISMAR 2021. He is on the Boards of six international journals, including Angewandte Chemie, ACS Chemical Biology, Chemical Biology and Drug Design, and ChemBioChem. He was on the Council of the American Peptide Society (2015-2021). He was the director two Brisbane-based biotech companies. He is on the Scientific Advisory Boards of James Cook University's Centre for Biodiscovery and Molecular Development of Therapeutics (BMDT), the University of Wollongong's Illawara Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) and Enzytag. He conceived and supports two publicly accessible databases - Cybase on circular proteins (www.cybase.org.au), and conotoxins (www.conoserver.org).
Body:Highlights
Professor David Craik is a structural biologist who travels the world discovering new molecules in plants and animals. His area of expertise is peptides (mini-proteins). He is looking for peptides that could be effective treatments for a range of diseases or have useful applications as environmentally friendly agri-chemicals. He particularly likes to discover something in nature and then use molecular design to improve on it.
Professor Craik is best known for discovering a family of peptides with a unique circular structure, which he aptly named cyclotides. Cyclotides are super stable, which makes them desirable as drug leads. By re-engineering the structure of other peptides to mimic cyclotides, he is making potent and specific peptides orally active – creating the perfect drug. He is known internationally as the founder of this field of research.
He was the first person to take a peptide from a cone snail, a natural conotoxin, and re-engineer its structure to make it cyclic. By improving the strength of the molecule, he created a natural painkiller 100 times stronger than the current market leader gabapentin, and potentially with lower side effects. The drug is currently showing great promise in animal trials. This natural painkiller is the first time an orally active drug has resulted from an animal venom. In other applications Professor Craik’s methodology led to the commercialisation of an environmentally friendly insecticide.
Professor Craik is known internationally for his work in peptide-based drug design and sought after as a conference speaker on the topic.
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Professor Phil Hugenholtz
Group LeaderSchool of Chemistry and Molecular BiosciencesResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:From a PhD in 1994 at the University of Queensland, Phil Hugenholtz developed a career in microbiology and genomics in the USA and in Australia. Phil's last position in the USA was as Staff Scientist (2004-2010) at the DOE Joint Genome Institute. In late 2010 Phil returned home to establish the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics. The Centre was founded around himself as Director, and ARC QEII Fellow and Deputy Director, Dr Gene Tyson. Phil has published over one hundred papers in molecular microbial ecology including several Science & Nature papers.
Currently, Phil's research interests include the microbial ecology and evolution of host-associated ecosystems such as the termite hindgut and human microbiome, and genomic mapping of the microbial tree of life. In 2006, Phil received the Young Investigators Award from the International Society of Microbial Ecology (ISME) and was elected in 2012 as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM).
Dr Sonia Troeira Henriques
IMB FellowAdjunct Associate ProfessorInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Body:Highlights
Dr Sónia Henriques research is focused on ‘breaching cell membranes with cell penetrating peptides’. This relates to the use of cyclic cell penetrating peptides to cross cell membranes. Cyclic cell penetrating peptides can be used as carriers to deliver macromolecules inside cells. We are applying this approach in three ways. Firstly, to design a new generation of drugs against intracellular targets to treat cancer. Secondly, to optimise peptides to treat infectious diseases caused by bacteria. Finally, as research tools to modulate functions within microorganisms (e.g. bacteria, algae).
Dr Henriques combines expertise on cyclic disulfide-rich peptides, cell-penetrating peptides, antimicrobial peptides, and membrane biology. She has a strong background in biophysical methodologies to characterise peptide-membrane interactions. Her research activities involve biophysical studies (e.g. surface plasmon resonance, flow cytometry and fluorescence spectroscopy) with model membranes to identify the membrane properties that modulate peptide bioactivity, and correlating them with studies with cells.
Dr Henriques graduated in Biochemistry (2004) and obtained a PhD degree in Molecular Biophysics (2008) from University of Lisbon in Portugal. In 2008 she was awarded an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship and started her postdoctoral research at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB). In 2009, Dr Henriques was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship and was appointed as invited lecturer in Portugal (Medicine School, University of Lisbon). Dr Henriques returned to IMB in 2012 on reception of an ARC DECRA and she was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2015. She has conducted research in international and national universities including Université Libre de Brussels in Belgium, University of Southern Denmark, and the University of California Santa Barbara in USA.
Research projects
Development of novel anticancer drugs able to target and switch off cancer cells
Cancer is responsible for about three of every ten deaths and is the leading cause of disease burden in Australia. This is largely because conventional chemotherapeutic agents have low specificity for tumour cells, high toxicity for healthy cells and susceptibility to the development of resistance. Thus, there is a need for more effective cancer treatments that are tailored for a specific cancer and are not toxic to healthy cells. As each type of cancer is unique and results from alterations in intracellular pathways, inhibition of specific protein-protein interactions involved in the development of a certain type of cancer is a potential strategy to design safer cancer therapeutics. We are developing peptide-based therapeutics to target and deliver tailored drugs able to cross the cell membrane of tumour cells and specifically inhibit cancer pathways involved in breast cancer, leukaemia and melanoma. From the inside, we can deactivate cancer cells and stop these cancers from growing and spreading, without affecting healthy organs.
Breaching membrane barriers to modulate intracellular pathways
Cell membranes are barriers that control what can get inside cells. The ability to cross these barriers and deliver biological macromolecules, such as biomarkers, therapeutics and research tools, inside cells has endless opportunities that can be used to modulate cell’s activity. We are working on the development of novel molecular transporters to deliver macromolecules inside cells/microorganisms with therapeutic and biotechnological relevance. This technology is based on the use of stable cyclic peptides to deliver genes, proteins, probes or biomarkers into distinct cell types (e.g. cancer cells, bacteria, algae). We are specifically interested in the use of cell-penetrating peptides to target and monitor cancer biomarkers and to deliver nucleic acids inside model organisms with cell wall (e.g. bacteria, algae) to improve their potential as biofactories to produce therapeutics and biofuel.
Host-defence peptides to treat cancer and infectious diseases
Host-defence peptides are produced by our innate immune system and are expressed in response to fungal and bacterial infections and some have been shown to be able to kill tumour cells. We are interested in designing more selective and potent anticancer and antimicrobial drugs using host defence peptides. This will be achieved by unravelling the mode-of-action and identifying the features responsible for the anticancer and antimicrobial properties of host-defence peptides. We are particularly interested in redesigning host defence peptides to confer to them ability to selectively target breast cancer, blood tumours, metastatic circulating cells, or multi-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections.
Partners and collaborators
Collaborators and partners include:
- Professor David Craik (IMB, UQ)
- Professor Mibel Aguilar (Monash University)
- Professor Frances Separovic (University of Melbourne)
- Dr Christina Schroeder (IMB, UQ)
- Professor Miguel Castanho (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
- Professor David Andreu (University Pompeu Fabra, Spain)
- Professor Luis Bagatolli (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark)
- Professor Patrick Daugherty (University of California Santa Barbara, USA)
- Professor Fabrice Homblé (Université Libre de Brussels, Belgium).
Engagement and impact
Dr Henriques is a biochemist/biophysicist. Her work in mechanistic studies of peptides and peptide-membrane interactions is highly multidisciplinary and places her research at the interface of chemistry, biochemistry, structural biology, membrane biology, biotechnology and medical research. She is the co-author of over 50 publications on cyclic peptides, drug design and/or the mechanism of action of peptides, and has presented >20 oral communications in international scientific conferences including invited talks in prestigious national and international conferences (e.g. Gordon Conference on antimicrobial peptides, Australian Biophysics Symposium).
Dr Henriques has participated in several outreach activities for non-scientific and community audiences. Recently she wrote a chapter for a children’s book to promote science among Portuguese-descendent children (6-12 years) living in the United Kingdom. This book was released in late 2016 in Portugal. Following her award to attend a Nobel Laureate meeting in Germany in 2014 she was given the opportunity to share her story with the community through the media. Her abstract submitted to 60th Biophysical Meeting in 2016 was selected by the American Institute of Physics and biophysical society journal editors as one that should be of great interest to reporters. As a proof of that, her work was featured in several international (e.g. UK, USA) news websites/online magazines, such as ABC news, Medical News Today, Tech times, International Business Times). She has presented a seminar “the Pharma revolution: growing medicinal drugs in your backyard” at the Global Leadership Series to UQ alumni and the community; her work on cell-penetrating peptides was featured in Chemistry World, a news magazine from the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Dr Henriques’ work is at the interface of fundamental and applied research, together with her team she is trying to create new knowledge in the field of peptide drug research and cancer cell biology, and in potentially developing better and safer therapeutics to treat blood, skin and breast cancers than traditional drugs. This research has the potential to create a new generation of targeted cancer treatments that would deliver many benefits to cancer patients and the community. Developing better therapeutics with fewer side effects could potentially reduce the healthcare costs associated with treating patients diagnosed with cancer.
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Emeritus Professor Mark Ragan
Emeritus ProfessorInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Body:Highlights
Mark Ragan is an Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
He was founding Head of IMB's former Division of Genomics & Computational Biology (2000-2014), founding Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics (2003-2015), and co-founder of QFAB Bioinformatics.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Chicago (Biochemistry) and Dalhousie University (Biology). His 200+ peer-reviewed research publications in biochemistry, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, genomics, algorithmics, bioinformatics and computational biology have attracted more than 13500 citations.
Core technologies in his research group (integration of large bioscience data, scalable algorithms on trees and networks, bioinformatic workflows, high-performance and data-centric computing) were applied to problems of genome sequencing and de novo assembly, comparative evolutionary genomics, and inference of biomolecular networks particularly in the coral reef symbiont Symbiodinium, and in targeting therapies against DNA damage repair networks in familial breast cancer.
Mark was also involved in national and international infrastructure initiatives in genomics, computing, data and bioinformatics services.
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Professor Nathan Palpant
National Heart Foundation of Australia Future Leader Fellow - Group LeaderInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:Career Summary: 2009: PhD, University of Michigan, USA with training in cardiac physiology, modelling myocardial ischemia in vivo and in vitro, and development of therapeutic approaches for myocardial ischemia; 2009–2015: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Washington, Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, USA with training in stem cell biology, genomics, genome editing, and cell therapeutics for ischemic heart disease; 2015–current: Group Leader, University of Queensland (UQ), Institute for Molecular Bioscience; 2022-current: Associate Professor, UQ; 2018–2021 and 2023-2026: National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow. Dr. Palpant's research team has expertise in human stem cell biology, computational genomics, and cardiac physiology, which enables them to translate outcomes from cell biology and genomics to disease modelling, drug discovery, and preclinical modelling.
Body:Latest publication
Dr Palpant and colleagues have published the most in-depth study of exactly how human stem cells can be turned into heart cells. The work involved measuring changes in gene activity in tens of thousands of individual cells as they move through the stages of heart development.
Unlike those tissues, the heart does not have the capacity for self-repair after damage (such as a heart attack). This is one reason why heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. This research may help us find ways to repair the heart in the future. Read more
Highlights
The Stem Cells and Cardiovascular Development lab run by Dr Nathan Palpant uses human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), genomics, genome editing, and disease modelling to study mechanisms controlling cardiovascular development and disease.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide and new therapeutics are required to address growing public health demands. Expanding treatment options for cardiovascular diseases requires interdisciplinary research from developmental biology to translation.
To this end, Dr Palpant leads functional genomics and epigenetic studies at single cell resolution and across diverse cardiac and vascular fates to determine the genetic basis of cell identity and fate.
His team is developing stem cell models of disease for drug discovery. They are also building links with clinician/researchers bringing together stem cell biology, mechanical-assist devices, and large animal disease models to identify new approaches to address cardiovascular disease.
Dr Palpant received training in cardiac physiology (PhD, University of Michigan) and developmental biology and genomics (University of Washington), resulting in 27 publications in high-impact journals including Nature, Nature Protocols, and Development.
In November 2015, Dr Palpant relocated to The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience to establish the Stem Cells and Cardiovascular Development Laboratory.
During his career, Dr Palpant has received internationally competitive awards and positions including:
- The International Society for Heart Research Young Investigator Award
- International speaking invitations in the US, Europe, Australia, and Asia
- He is an IMB Group Leader, Co-Director of Stem Cells Australia’s Cardiac Repair and Regeneration theme, and Co-Director of the Queensland Facility for Advanced Genome Editing.
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Using genomics to elucidate developmental cell lineage decisions, Dr Nathan Palpant
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Chief investigators (UQ)
Dr Christiana Dal'Molin
LecturerSchool of Chemical Engineering Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information TechnologyResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Roger Wepf
DirectorCentre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, Faculty of ScienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
DirectorGlobal Change InstituteResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Bill Bellotti
Director Food Systems ProgramGlobal Change InstituteResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Peta Ashworth
Chair in Sustainable Energy FuturesSchool of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information TechnologyResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Elizabeth Gillam
ProfessorSchool of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, Faculty of ScienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:Cytochrome P450 Enzymes: biological catalysts of unprecedented versatility.
Cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYPs, P450s) especially those responsible for drug metabolism in humans, are the unifying theme of the research in our lab. These fascinating enzymes are catalysts of exceptional versatility, and functional diversity. In humans they are principally responsible for the clearance of a practically unlimited variety of chemicals from the body, but are also critical in many important physiological processes. In other organisms (plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, almost everything!) they carry out an unprecedented range of functions, such as defense, chemical communication, neural development and even pigmentation. Recently we have discovered that P450s are present within cells in the Fe(II) form, a finding that has led to a radical revision of the dogma concerning the P450 catalytic cycle, and has implications for the control of uncoupling of P450 activity in cells.
The capabilities of P450s are only just coming to be fully recognized and structural studies on P450s should yield critical insights into how enzyme structure determines function. Moreover, the biotechnological potential of P450s remains yet to be exploited. All of the specific research themes detailed below take advantage of our recognized expertise in the expression of recombinant human cytochrome P450 enzymes in bacteria. Our group is interested in finding out how P450s work and how they can be made to work better.
Artificial evolution of P450s for drug development and bioremediation: a way of exploring the sequence space and catalytic potential of P450s. The demonstrated catalytic diversity of P450 enzymes makes them the ideal starting material for engineering sophisticated chemical reagents to catalyse difficult chemical transformations. We are using artificial (or directed) evolution to engineer enzymes that are more efficient, robust and specialized than naturally occurring enzymes with the aim of selecting for properties that are commercially useful in the areas of drug discovery and development and bioremediation of pollutants in the environment. The approach we are using also allows us to explore the essential sequence and structural features that underpin all ~12000 known P450s so as to determine how they work.
P450s in brain: relevance to mental illness and neurodegenerative diseases. While P450s are responsible for the metabolic clearance of drugs from the human body, this is not always a benevolent process: sometimes metabolites are generated that are chemically reactive and may cause mutagenic or other toxic effects. Moreover P450s are involved in the synthesis and degradation of important endogenous chemicals, physiological roles which can be affected by drugs and dietary chemicals. We are particularly interested in the role of P450s in brain chemistry. P450s localised in mitochondria have recently been shown to contribute to the neurotoxicity of some drugs and can lead to oxidative damage to mitochondria, possibly contributing to the development of neurodegenerative diseases.
Biosketch:
After graduating from UQ with first class Honours in Biochemistry, Elizabeth took up a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Overseas Scholarship to pursue doctoral work at Oxford University then undertook postdoctoral work at the Center in Molecular Toxicology and Department of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine with Prof. F.P. Guengerich. She returned to UQ in 1993 to take up a position in Pharmacology and joined the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences in 2009 as a Professor of Biochemistry.
Chief investigators (Australia)
Dr Megan O'Mara
Rita Cornforth Fellow and Senior LecturerANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Australian National UniversityResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor Peter Ralph
DirectorClimate Change Cluster, University of Technology SydneyResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Professor David Lewis
ProfessorSchool of Chemical Engineering, The University of AdelaideResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Postdoctoral researchers
Dr Ian Ross
Senior BiologistInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Body:View Ian's publications via Google Scholar.
Dr Juliane Wolf
Research FellowInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Researcher biography:Dr Juliane Wolf obtained her Bachelor degree in Biotechnology-Bioprocess Engineering at the Anhalt University of Applied Science, Germany, in 2008 and completed her Master degree in Biotechnology-Molecular Biology at the Westaehlische Wilhelms Universitaet Muenster, Germany, in 2010. She went on to obtain her PhD at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at The University of Queensland, Australia, in 2015, where she continued as a postdoctoral researcher. She took a researcher career break from 2018-20 to look after her children and work as an international industry consultant.
Dr Juliane Wolf is a microalgae specialist and manages the Centre for Solar Biotechnology (CSB) Pilot Plant since 2020. Her research focus is on the development of high-efficiency microalgae production systems and automated robotic screening systems. Her work has played an integral role in the establishment of the Centre for Solar Biotechnology (CSB) for which she provides scientific expertise in bioprocess engineering (bioreactor scale up and operation, process design and development), biology (bio-prospecting, optimisation of culturing and production conditions, physiology) and biochemistry. Her research drives the development of high-throughput screening assays for the optimisation of nutrients, light and temperature which are critical to up-scaling the production of photosynthetic microorganisms. More recently her projects focus on the integration of microalgae biotechnologies into industries that support a circular bioeconomy by building new comprehensive techno-economic and life-cycle analysis platforms. This includes leading interdisciplinary teams to drive the development of data-driven models (incl. machine learning techniques) to optimise process design and control leading to the build up of digital twins.
Body:View Juliane's publications via Google Scholar.
Dr John Roles
Research FellowInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Students
Miss Zeenat Rupawalla
PhD StudentInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Body:Zeenat completed her Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of San Francisco in 2013. Throughout her Bachelor’s degree, Zeenat worked in several different Labs as a Research Assistant ranging from Urology to Regenerative Medicine investigating the role of targeted transcription factors for cancer therapeutics. After her Bachelor’s she worked at the University of California San Francisco as a Junior Specialist in Prof. Robert Belloch’s Regenerative Medicine Lab examining the role of a transcription factor in prostate cancer cell lines.
Furthermore, she worked at a Pharmaceutical Company in India, as a Project Trainee in a Drug Discovery Lab under Dr. Debjani Bhar. After gaining an eclectic range of skills from different Labs and countries her research interest shifted from Cancer and Biomedical Science to sustainable bio-product formulation. This was a result of her prolonged interest in investigating the effects of climate change and food systems on human health.
Therefore, her passion brought her to Australia, where she completed her Master of Molecular Biology from The University of Queensland in 2017, in Prof. Ben Hankamer’s Lab investigating the role of genetically modifying microalgae for sustainable biofuel production. This led to the start of her PhD in 2018 in Prof. Ben Hankamer’s Lab, where she is currently optimising nutrient conditions for the upscale production and development of algae-based bio-products from waste systems. Besides academia, Zeenat is a Yoga Instructor and a Scuba diver.
Mr Sabar Budiman
PhD studentInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Dr Hong Phuong Le
Institute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:1Supervisor:Miss Mengyuan Kong
PhD StudentInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:Mr Eduardo Gorron Gomez
PhD studentInstitute for Molecular BioscienceResearcher profile is public:0Supervisor:- Associate Scientific AssistantInstitute for Molecular Bioscience
- Global Challenges ScholarInstitute for Molecular Bioscience
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The Edge: Genetics
People have known for thousands of years that parents pass traits to their children, but it is only relatively recently that our technology has caught up to our curiosity, enabling us to delve into the mystery of how this inheritance occurs, and the implications for predicting, preventing and treating disease.
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