Events

Assoc Prof Tom Williams from the University of Bristol will present some recently published and new (unpublished) results on the phylogeny of Bacteria, the nature of the last bacterial common ancestor, the timescale of bacterial evolution, and the impact of the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) on bacterial genomes >2Ga.

Associate Prof Tom Williams from The University of Bristol with present new work on phylogenomic methods and their application to the deepest branches of the tree of life, the nature of the last bacterial common ancestor, and the timescale for the diversification of bacterial and our own eukaryotic cells.

Dr Keitos Sokratous from OMass Therapeutics, Oxford, UK, will present a general overview of structural mass spectrometry (MS) approaches in studying proteins and protein assemblies, with a particular focus in native MS.

Prof. Huw M. L. Davies from the Department of Chemistry, Emory University, USA will describe a series of new bowl-shaped catalysts, which are capable of distinguishing between very similar C-H bonds in a highly selective manner. Please contact Prof Craig Williams (c.williams@uq.edu.au) if you wish to meet the speaker afterwards.

Prof. Varinder K. Aggarwal from the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, UK reactivity will discuss selectivity in various ylide reactions, reactivity of highly strained molecules and C-H borylation reactions. Please contact Prof Craig Williams (c.williams@uq.edu.au) if you wish to meet Prof Aggarwal afterwards.

Prof. Nidhi Jain from the UQ Centre for Natural Gas and Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, will discuss his groups recently developed strategies to construct C-C, C-N, C-O and C-S bonds assisted by palladium and copper catalysts, hypervalent iodine reagents and photocatalysts in visible light. Please contact Dr Paul Shaw (p.shaw3@uq.edu.au) if you wish to meet the speaker afterwards.

This seminar will not feature any Western blots, ELISAs, immuno-fluorescent microscopy or immuno-assays. Instead, Dr Jason Leung from Pricewaterhouse Coopers will talk about: I) The skills and experiences gained through research and academia and their value when transferred to other sectors; and ii) The lessons learned from other sectors and how these are relevant to research and academia

Dr Julie Pearce from the UQ Centre for Natural Gas, will discuss experiments performed at reservoir pressure and temperature conditions to react pure and impure CO2 with formation water and the rock cores, and modelling to understand potential impacts of CO2 storage. 

Associate Professor Emma Hamilton-Williams from UQDI will present the findings from her team's recent clinical trial using a prebiotic fibre supplement to target the gut microbiota in adults with type 1 diabetes to remodel the microbiota functional response as well as systemic immunity.

Molecular basis of auto-inhibition, activation and substrate recognition of SARM1, the executioner of axon degeneration presented by Dr Weixu Gu and Co-encapsulation of Ancestral P450 and its redox partner Cytochrome P450 reductase in VLP (P22) presented by Loic Bourdon

Scientia Associate Professor Rona Chandrawati from the School of Chemical Engineering and Australian Centre for Nanomedicine, UNSW, will discuss the design, synthesis, and applications of nanoparticles for sensing and drug delivery.

Tess Hick from Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands will present work that addresses the hypothetical risk of RNA recombination between self-replicating alphavirus replicon and circulating wild-type viruses.

Dr Ruth Knibbe from the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, UQ, will discuss two main areas her group has been working on – in-operando liquid electrochemical transmission electron microscopy and the development of solid-state batteries.

A/Prof Katharina Ronacher from the Mater Research Institute will present data demonstrating that oxidised cholesterols, or so called oxysterols, that are produced produced in the lung in response to both bacterial (M. tuberculosis) and viral respiratory infections (influenza, SARS-CoV-2), facilitate the chemotactic recruitment of immune cells expressing the oxysterol-sensing receptor GPR183 to lung.

Dr Rebecca O. Fuller from Chemistry – School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, will present a talk highlighting three very different magnetic materials that her team is developing.

Dr Daniel Rawle, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, will describe a serendipitous discovery that, in the course of investigating the physiological role of granzyme A, has revealed the significance of the Nnt gene mutation in the inflammatory responses in mouse models. Remarkably, k-mer mining of the Sequence Read Archive illustrated that ≈27% of Run Accessions and ≈38% of BioProjects listing C57BL/6J as the mouse strain had Nnt sequencing reads inconsistent with a C57BL/6J genetic background. Nnt and mouse background issues have clearly complicated our understanding of granzyme A and may similarly have influenced studies across a broad range of fields. We also show that Nnt genotype and mouse backgrounds can affect SARS-CoV-2 mouse models. I will end the talk by outlining the SARS-CoV-2 mouse models in our lab, and another serendipitous discovery; ACE2-independent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Dr Stephanie Schweiker from the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at Bond University will present on the student-led feedback and modifications made to improve our virtual laboratory experiments developed for multimodal (hybrid) teaching.

Dr Anne Sayer from QAAFI/SCMB will present recent research into the effectiveness of using RNA interference (RNAi)-based plant protection as an environmentally sustainable disease control strategy against fungal pathogens.

Prof Steven L. Castle from the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department, Brigham Young University / Provo, UTAH, USA, will present results from his teams synthetic efforts targeting the peptide yaku’amide A and related analogs, and the anticancer activity of these compounds will be discussed. In addition, efforts to use the methodology developed in this endeavor to evaluate the ability of dehydroamino acids to increase the proteolytic stability of peptides will be described.

Associate Professor David Anderson from the Burnet Institute will provide an update on the development of point-of-care tests for CD4 T-cells (Visitect CD4), syphilis, liver disease and cirrhosis, and dimeric IgA and neutralising antibodies in COVID-19.

EMCRs and HDR students from the Infection and Immunity theme will present their latest research.

Dr Ali Zaid from the Menzies Health Institute, Griffith University, present recent work based on animal models of arthritogenic alphaviruses Ross River virus (RRV) and chikungunya virus (CHIKV), with a focus on immune responses and the role of distinct immune compartments in inflammation, disease, and resolution.

Dr Fengwang Li from the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Sydney, will talk about recent advances in CO2RR to ethylene, a chemical used to produce plastics and the basis of a US$160B global industry. Specifically, molecular tuning catalyst design strategy, membrane electrode assembly (MEA) based electrolyser, and carbon balance in CO2RR will be discussed.

Associate Professor Kirsty Short from the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, presents research demonstrating that compared to other wild waterfowl, black swans have not expanded their immune gene repertoire, lack a key viral pattern-recognition receptor and mount a poorly controlled inflammatory response to HPAI.

Dr William Gee, Senior Lecturer at the School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, presents the latest challenge faced by iodine alpha-napthoflavone fingerprint development.