Events

Professor Steven Bull from the Department of Chemistry, University of Bath, will describe efforts to use a biorefinery based approach to catalytically upgrade biorenewable monoterpene feedstocks into a variety of sustainable commodity chemicals, bioplastics and drugs that are currently derived from non-renewable petrochemical feedstocks. In the second half of the presentation, efforts into developing fluorescent chemical sensors as investigational tools for probing complex biological processes in cellular systems, including for the real-time detection of osteocyte bone resorbing activity in deep bone cavities, imaging of amyloid-beta plaques in mice brains and visualisation of drug induced liver damage will be described.

Professor Lisa Ng, the Executive Director of A*STAR’s Infectious Diseases Labs, will provide an overview of the pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection. She will describe its interaction with the immune system and the subsequent contribution of dysfunctional immune responses to disease progression that provided useful insights in the successful development of vaccines and booster strategies.

Professor Benjamin Schulz from the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences will present work on the development and use of glyco/proteomic analytical approaches for measuring the complexity of glycosylation and other post-translational modifications at systems levels to understand their dynamics and roles in fundamental biology, virology, and fermented beverages. 

Dr. Charlotte Oskam, Centre for Biosecurity and One Health, Harry Butler Institute, Murdoch University, will discuss the methodology used to characterise the bacterial communities found within Australian ticks and the search for novel candidate pathogens, as well as bacterial genera of known tick borne pathogens and endosymbionts. Her team's findings show that without the use of molecular advances, such as next-generation sequencing, many bacteria of potential medical and veterinary interest could go undetected.

Join us to learn about SCMB's research collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples - from traditional medicine and novel phage therapeutics to natural hot springs

Professor Tuba Esatbeyoglu form the Institute of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, will present her team's semisynthetic approach to the preparative formation of eight dimeric procyanidins from B-type, their isolation and elucidation of their structure.

Dr Mark Davies from the Doherty Institute, The University of Melbourne, will discuss the application of population genomics to advance vaccine design through to tracking the evolution and transmission of pathogenic clones of Streptococcus pyogenes.

Professor Debbie Silvester Dean from the School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Curtin University, will discuss her team's recent work elucidating reactions at the ionic liquid–solid electrode interface

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.