2010 Annual Report - Institute for Molecular Bioscience - University ...

imb annual report 2010
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FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
Professor John Mattick was awarded
an NHMRC Australia Fellowship. This
five-year fellowship, worth $4 million, is
designed for leading health and medical
researchers both from Australia and
overseas. Professor Geoffrey McLachlan
was awarded the Pitman Medal by the
Statistical Society of Australia. This gold
medal recognises great achievement
in the field of statistics, and Professor
McLachlan is only the 18 th recipient
since the prize was established in 1978.
Dr Ryan Taft, a postdoctoral researcher
in the Mattick group, was a finalist in two
Eureka Prizes, the Early Career Research
Award and the People’s Choice Award.
Dr Taft was selected for his examination
of the non-coding portion of the human
genome, known informally as ‘junk DNA’.
He discovered, in collaboration with
Professor Mattick, tiny RNAs (tiRNA),
the smallest-yet discovered segments
of genetic material that may play a
role in gene expression. Dr Taft was
awarded a Dean’s Commendation for an
Outstanding Research Higher Degree
Thesis, as was Tim Mercer, also from the
Mattick group.
CENTRES AND FACILITIES
The Queensland Centre for Medical
Genomics (QCMG) was officially opened
in June by Queensland Premier Anna
Bligh. Professor Sean Grimmond,
QCMG Director, and his team continue
to make rapid progress in sequencing
pancreatic and ovarian tumours as part
of the International Cancer Genome
Consortium. At the end of 2009, the
team had sequenced around 1 terabase
of patient samples. One year on, they
are close to achieving 10 terabases of
genetic material, at a rate of roughly
three tumours and three matched
normals per month. The senior team
expect the sequencing rate to rise
in 2011, with the arrival of upgraded
equipment from Applied Biosystems.
The senior team for the National
Computational Infrastructure
Specialised Facility in Bioinformatics,
and the EMBL Australia EBI Mirror, was
appointed in 2010. Dr David Green
was seconded as Project Manager
from his role as Manager of the highperformance
computing group at UQ
ITS. Dr Gerald Hartig, Gavin Graham
and Peter Scott accepted roles as
Senior IT Managers for development of
Applications, Systems and Web Services
respectively. Dr Hartig is a former IMB
PhD student who has since spent
time in IT management positions in
telecommunications and biotechnology
organisations.
The ARC Centre of Excellence in
Bioinformatics marked its final year in
2010. The Centre links 16 groups of
researchers at five Australian and four
international institutions to develop
an understanding of how genomic
information is translated into structures
and functions within the mammalian cell.
The Centre was originally funded for five
years, from 2003 until 2007, after which
time the ARC conducted a review and
not only extended the funding for the
Centre for another three years, but also
upgraded it to a Centre of Excellence.
Many components of the Centre’s
research will continue under external
grant and fellowship funding. The
Centre’s annual national Winter School
in Mathematical and Computational
Biology, which in 2010 attracted 261
registrants from 41 institutions across
Australia and ten other countries,
will be continued under funding from
Bioplatforms Australia and EMBL
Australia.
GRANT FUNDING AND RESEARCH
In 2010, group leaders in the Division
held over $14 million* in competitive
grants. Some of the new grants received
in 2010 included a $691,310 grant from
NHMRC, on which Dr Nicholas Hamilton
was a Chief Investigator with Professor
Melissa Little from the Molecular
Genetics and Development division.
The grant involves gaining a better
understanding of kidney disease through
studying nephron formation. Dr Hamilton
will use his novel approaches to imagebased
modelling of cellular processes to
contribute to improving our knowledge
of kidney development. Professor Mark
Ragan and Professor Lars Nielsen (AIBN)
received a $340,000 grant from ARC to
study the genetic sequences of more
than 700 pancreatic tumours. He will
compare the tumour genomes to those
of undiseased tissue in order to identify
the mutations that disrupt the process of
normal development and cause cancer.
MAJOR PUBLICATIONS
The division’s group leaders published
in a range of high-ranking international
journals throughout the year, including
Nature (Grimmond), Cell (Grimmond,
Teasdale), Nature Methods (Grimmond,
Hamilton, Ragan), Nature Structural
and Molecular Biology (Mattick),
Bioinformatics (Bailey, Ragan)
Developmental Cell (Mattick), Genome
Research (Bailey, Mattick, Grimmond),
and Stem Cells (Grimmond).