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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Why are hydrogenases found in the genomes of aerobic bacteria?

Recipient(s): Professor GM Cook | PI | University of Otago
Dr M Berney | PI | University of Otago
Dr DM Collins | AI | AgResearch

Public Summary: Microorganisms show a remarkable metabolic flexibility that allows them to adapt to various environmental changes such as oxygen tension. Mycobacteria are a group of obligate aerobes that require oxygen for growth, but paradoxically have the extraordinary ability to survive and metabolize under hypoxia. The goal of our research is to understand the molecular basis for this metabolic plasticity and determine what role hydrogenases play in this adaptation. The results of this study will contribute to our knowledge of how aerobic microorganisms adapt to hypoxia, and hydrogenases may represent an unexplored target for the development of new antimicrobials for a wide range of aerobic pathogens.

Total Awarded: $720,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Professor GM Cook

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 09-UOO-065


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Why do inbred males fire blanks? Unravelling the relationship between inbreeding and infertility

Recipient(s): Dr HR Taylor | PI | University of Otago
Dr P Brekke | AI | Zoological Society of London
Professor JV Briskie | AI | University of Canterbury
Dr NL Hemmings | AI | University of Sheffield
Associate Professor S Nakagawa | AI | University of New South Wales

Public Summary: Inbreeding negatively affects a wide range of life history traits in taxa as diverse as humans and plants. Mitigating the effects of inbreeding depression has been a key focus in animal husbandry and horticulture for millennia and, more recently, inbreeding has become a key topic in conservation science. It is well known that inbreeding negatively affects male fertility across a variety of taxa, but this phenomenon has rarely been examined in species where males are the homogametic sex (e.g., birds), or in the wild. While several sperm quality traits are known to be depressed by inbreeding (sperm morphology, motility, and DNA fragmentation) the interplay between these traits remains unexplored. The common fragility of male fertility suggests inbreeding disrupts a conserved set of genes across taxa, but these genes are yet to be unidentified. We will use a novel combination of genotyping by sequencing, computer assisted sperm analysis, and DNA fragmentation assessment to conduct a comparative study of inbreeding depression of male gamete quality in New Zealand's birds – the first such study in any wild system. We aim to elucidate the relationship between inbreeding and sperm quality, and identify candidate genes that might be responsible for infertility in inbred males.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Dr HR Taylor

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 16-UOO-199


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Why do texturally complex foods lead us to eat less?

Recipient(s): Professor BJ James | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr N Gant | PI | The University of Auckland
Associate Professor MJ Hautus | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor EA Foegeding | AI | North Carolina State University

Public Summary: We have recently demonstrated that eating food with complex texture accelerates the satiation response, leading a subject to eat less. Complex textures might be a combination of many sensations (crunchy, creamy, crispy etc.) like a Ferero Rocher chocolate, or a few textures sensed with high intensity, like a tooth-breakingly hard gingernut biscuit.

Where current work in the field of oral processing has linked accelerated satiation to longer chewing time and effort, our work addresses an important knowledge gap by linking food texture directly to satiation, independent of other factors. We hypothesise the link between texture and satiation results from the cascade of sensations during chewing. We will take the novel approach of directly investigating the response of the brain to these sensations and linking them to food material properties and the perception of texture.

One of the things that stops us eating is the feeling of satiation, but the obesity epidemic indicates there is more to over-eating than that. We aim to clarify one aspect of the satiation mechanism, the role of food texture, and so contribute to the overall understanding of appetite and eating.

Total Awarded: $945,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Professor BJ James

Panel: EIS

Project ID: 17-UOA-187


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Why don't orchid pollinators go extinct? A new mechanism for the maintenance of coevolutionary relationships

Recipient(s): Dr AC Gaskett | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor H Kokko | AI | Australian National University

Public Summary: Coevolutionary relationships such as pollination usually benefit both partners, but asymmetric interactions where one species benefits at the cost of another are puzzling. Why don’t exploited species go extinct? We propose a new general mechanism, ‘resilience’- traits that mitigate costs for an exploited species simultaneously prevent their escape from exploitation (by weakening selection for counteradaptations). Critically, ‘resilience’ traits improve the fitness of both exploiter and exploitee, making ‘resilient species’ ideal candidates for exploitation. New Zealand’s sexually deceptive Tongue orchids fool male insects into mating with and wasting sperm while pollinating flowers. Despite imposing extreme costs, Tongue orchids still achieve exceptional pollination rates. We’ve identified a possible resilience trait, haplodiploidy, in >95% of sexually deceived pollinator species worldwide. Haplodiploid females deprived of sperm can still reproduce, albeit all sons, in turn potentially boosting orchid pollination and fitness.
We will quantify, for the first time, pollinator costs and counteradaptations to sexual deception at individual, population, and species levels. We’ll use a large, phylogenetically-controlled international analysis of pollinator traits and orchid fitness, and mathematical modelling to test our new ‘resilience’ hypothesis. Our robust approach integrates big evolutionary hypotheses, field ecology, charismatic native species and modelling to authenticate a novel and widely applicable theory.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr AC Gaskett

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 16-UOA-321


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Why Europe? European expansion, industrialisation, and divergence, 1500-2000

Recipient(s): Professor JC Belich | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: Macro-historians currently contest the issue of Europe’s “great divergence” from the rest of the world. One school diminishes or even denies the divergence. Another still asserts, even celebrates, the divergence, tracing it to cultural and/or institutional factors dating back 500 to 2000 years. My most recent book (Replenishing the Earth) engages with aspects of this debate. This new project plunges to the heart of it, and would produce a fresh interpretation of European divergence that avoids both celebration and denial. It would crown my career-long efforts to engage New Zealand history with the cutting edge of international scholarship.

Total Awarded: $746,667

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Professor JC Belich

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 09-VUW-099


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Why fly when you can walk? Genetic pathways to flightlessness

Recipient(s): Dr GC Gibb | PI | Massey University
Professor SA Trewick | AI | Massey University

Public Summary: Why, when most birds are characterized by their ability to fly, do some become flightless? Flying costs energy, so if you don't have to fly, why bother? Within the rail family flightlessness has evolved on several independent lineages. The ecological and physical differences between related flightless and flighted birds are well studied, and we can explore these differences in detail in closely related species. We now have emerging molecular tools with which we can investigate the underlying genetic mechanisms involved in the pathways to flightlessness.
Exploiting comparative genomics to identify key genetic loci we will investigate the way developmental genes influence major morphological and behavioural outcomes in nature. We can now apply this system to examine the link between genotype (molecules) and phenotype (morphology) with naturally occurring biological replicates. This research will enhance our understanding of many important genetic pathways, including limb development, reproductive capacity, immunology and metabolism. The knowledge we gain from this unique system of birds will have application in many other species. Our research will provide new insight into the molecular underpinnings of a profound ecological shift.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University

Contact Person: Dr GC Gibb

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 16-MAU-107


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Why is the most abundant enzyme in the world lacking specificity?

Recipient(s): Dr FG Pearce | PI | University of Canterbury
Professor I Andersson | AI | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Professor JA Gerrard | AI | University of Canterbury

Public Summary: Rubisco is the most abundant enzyme in the world, with an estimated 5-10 kg Rubisco for every person on Earth. It is also one of the most important enzymes in the world, converting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into organic compounds. Yet it is a notoriously slow and inefficient enzyme, due to difficulty distinguishing between carbon dioxide and oxygen. With increased interest in climate change, understanding how Rubisco fixes carbon is of critical importance. Our research will investigate the role of protein dynamics in determining enzyme efficiency, and will extend the studies to enzymes from seaweed and plankton.

Total Awarded: $266,667

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Dr FG Pearce

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 09-UOC-076


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: Why the world does not look flat to Cyclops and one-eyed pirates: The role of visual motion in human depth perception

Recipient(s): Assoc Prof J Perrone | PI | University of Waikato
Assoc Prof RJ Krauzlis | PI | Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Dr LS Stone | PI | NASA Ames Research Center

Public Summary: The recent revival in stereoscopic (3-D) movies (e.g., Avatar) has enabled many people to experience the illusion of three-dimensional depth created from pairs of flat two-dimensional (2-D) images. Special glasses transform the flat images on the screen into ‘3-D’ so that the depicted world appears in front of and behind the screen. This raises the question as to why moviegoers and TV viewers are happy to watch regular 2-D movies and TV. If the on-screen scenes simply look like flat shapes with no depth, why do people keep watching 2-D movies? The reason is that stereoscopic cues are not essential; the human brain is able to recover a sense of depth from flat 2-D images by using visual motion information. It has long been known that visual motion can help create an illusion of depth, but the specific brain mechanisms that enable this to happen remain unknown. In this project we will develop and test a new theory of depth-from-motion estimation in humans. As well as answering an age-old question concerning a key brain function we also hope to provide guidance to engineers who are trying to recreate human depth perception in single-camera robot-vision systems.

Total Awarded: $651,355

Duration: 3

Host: University of Waikato

Contact Person: Assoc Prof J Perrone

Panel: EHB

Project ID: 10-UOW-016


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2015

Title: Widely-tunable optical microresonator parametric oscillators.

Recipient(s): Dr SG Murdoch | PI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: We propose a new class of ultra-compact tunable optical source capable of wide-band wavelength tunability. Using an optical microresonator, new optical frequencies can be generated at unprecedentedly low power levels through the nonlinear process of optical parametric oscillation. By harnessing techniques borrowed directly from nonlinear fiber optics, precise control over these new frequencies is possible. Our primary goal is the first experimental demonstration of a widely-tunable microresonator parametric oscillator. Further work will extend the operating range of these oscillators into the visible and critically important mid-IR molecular fingerprint region. Through experiment and theory we will explore the fundamental limits to the performance and tunability of these devices. To demonstrate the competitiveness of these sources in practical applications, trace-level gas detection of methane and carbon-dioxide will be demonstrated using a microresonator oscillator to directly interrogate their strong mid-IR resonances. With on-chip photonic integration of microresonator devices already a reality, this new type of widely tunable coherent light source has the potential to trigger an explosion of new applications in areas where the current day alternatives are simple too big and too expensive.

Total Awarded: $760,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr SG Murdoch

Panel: EIS

Project ID: 15-UOA-295


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2012

Title: Will the East Antarctic ice-sheet contribute to global sea-level rise under warmer-world scenarios?

Recipient(s): Dr NR Golledge | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr CW Fogwill | AI | University of New South Wales
Dr DE Kowalewski | AI | University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dr RH Levy | AI | GNS Science

Public Summary: The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) constitutes the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth, yet its potential contribution to future sea-level rise is not well constrained. Although present melt-rates are low, a better understanding of potential locations and rates of EAIS ice loss in coming centuries is essential. Interglacials of the early Pliocene (c. 4--4.5 Ma) are good analogues for future (warmer) scenarios, but geological records of sea-level changes from which former ice volumes can be inferred are equivocal, and cannot reliably establish whether the EAIS grew or shrank during these episodes. Using a sophisticated ice-sheet model, new continental topographic data, and climate simulations of early Pliocene conditions, we will simulate the evolution of the EAIS under a range of oceanic and atmospheric conditions. Our suite of experiments will establish the likely geometry of the early-Pliocene EAIS, from which we will gain a robust measure of its contribution to palaeo-sea levels. We will establish the rates and locations where greatest changes may occur, and identify whether thresholds exist. Setting our findings in the context of other warm periods of the geological past, we will gain a wider understanding of both past and future EAIS fluctuations.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr NR Golledge

Panel: ESA

Project ID: 12-VUW-111


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