spits summer - the Hawkesbury Blue Mountains Alpaca Region

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Spits & Pieces Alpacas and the Vertebrate Chip At the Royal Easter Show in Sydney last year, Julie and Richard Bird of The Gorge Alpacas met a pair of CSIRO scientists, David Mitchell and Maree O'Sullivan, on a quest for some alpaca blood to test their Vertebrate Chip idea. The Vertebrate Chip is a tool for exploring gene expression. It might one day enable alpaca breeders to find out what genes are involved in traits like coat colour so that they can selectively breed certain types. The idea for the Vertebrate Chip sprang from CSIRO's work on new statistical techniques to analyse the data generated by DNA chip experiments. A DNA chip is a small support matrix on which a set of many thousands of DNA sequences is arrayed. The chip is used for experiments that reveal the pattern of gene expression in a particular species. The purpose is to understand which genes are involved in a particular disease, or trait of interest - like coat colour. “CSIRO works on a lot of different species of animals and plants, in quite a piecemeal fashion,” explains David, “and each time someone wants to look at a new species, they have to create a new type of DNA chip for that particular species. Not only is that quite expensive and time consuming, but with all the different DNA chips, it's like we're all laying down different gauge railroads.” by Andrea Mettenmeyer, (CMIS, ANU - Acton) “With the Vertebrate Chip project, we want to lay down a national standard gauge. The 10 idea is to be able to use one DNA chip across many different species rather than just within one species.” That's where The Gorge Alpacas came in. Four members of the herd were recruited to the project, each donating 10mL of blood from which DNA was later extracted, back at the lab. “It was quite an interesting experience, herding alpacas across a paddock,” Maree recalls. “But they were very obliging and actually gave us less trouble than the human subjects.” Along with the alpaca DNA, DNA from rabbits and humans was used in experiments with commercially available human DNA chips. The plan was to find out whether, using CSIRO's new statistical techniques, the human DNA chips would yield meaningful information about rabbits and alpacas. “The research is ongoing, but early results look quite promising,” says Maree. “It's exciting for us because it means we can pursue developing our statistical techniques to make the whole process of doing DNA chip experiments much smarter.” “It's also good news for breeders of species like alpacas, for which there aren't commercially available DNA chips, because it will shortcut the process of doing genetic studies to identify commercially valuable traits.”
Spits & Pieces Breaking News! by Warwick Fuller We arrived home on dusk one afternoon in June and went straight down to check and feed the six girls. Serenade was missing! They graze in the bottom paddock and come up for their feed and to camp overnight. I headed down the hill along a pad they usually return on. I found her standing and calling loudly for mum. A fawn girl by Windsong Valley Braveheart. She is one year old and growing out beautifully. As I approached her she went to move and nearly fell. She had broken her left Tibia and Fibula! Back at the house I assumed it was not possible to set a broken leg on an animal of this size and so was thinking the worst. The vet could get there in about an hour. So now I had to work out how to get Serenade 200 metres back up a rough hill too steep for a four-wheel drive, and in the dark. Negative of x-ray Wendy rang a friend and neighbour, Tom Kent (Ngullaminya Alpacas) and he arrived almost before the phone was put down. (AHH! Don’t say “put down”!) (Continued on page 12) 11
Page 1 and 2: NEWSLETTER of the HAWKESBURY - BLUE
Page 3 and 4: Spits & Pieces Contents Committee -
Page 5 and 6: Perhaps the only “downsides” of
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Page 9: Spits & Pieces Alpaca Sires Austral
Page 13 and 14: Spits & Pieces Calendar January 200
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Page 17 and 18: Austin Park Eileen Clough Austin Pa
Page 19 and 20: Ngullaminya Tom & Joan Kent Ngullam
Page 21 and 22: Spits & Pieces Crafty Work Whilst m
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Page 25 and 26: After 12 months of experimentation
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Page 31 and 32: Spits & Pieces Lettuce Many people
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spits summer - the Hawkesbury Blue Mountains Alpaca Region

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