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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: A novel system for sympatric speciation: a species flock of green algae from ancient Lake Baikal

Recipient(s): Dr C Boedeker | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr F Leliaert | AI | Ghent University
Associate Professor GC Zuccarello | AI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: Species formation is one of the fundamental questions of evolutionary biology, and for most organisms it remains largely enigmatic how populations enter different evolutionary paths and complete the speciation process. We have discovered a monophyletic group of algae with low interspecific genetic divergence but exceptional morphological diversity endemic to ancient Lake Baikal, Russia. Our preliminary data suggest that this group diversified in sympatry and represents a recent, rapid radiation. Using this novel system, we will generate dated phylogenies, karyological data and extensive datasets of microsatellites using next generation sequencing. We will test for 1) degrees of reproductive isolation between morphospecies, 2) hybridization and polyploidy, 3) sympatric speciation and 4) timing of the radiation. Organellar haplotypes will be used to identify possible introgression. Polyploidy will be investigated as this phenomenon can lead to species formation and frequently occurs after hybridisation. The age of the Baikal clade will be reconciled with historical geological and environmental data to infer possible causes of the radiation. The established collaboration with the Limnological Institute in Irkutsk will make additional fieldwork feasible. This study of the drivers of speciation provides a unique opportunity to address major biological questions and to work at the forefront of algal evolution.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr C Boedeker

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 13-VUW-201


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2014

Title: A question of identity: statistical methods for a new era in wildlife abundance estimation

Recipient(s): Associate Professor RM Fewster | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor PE Jupp | AI | University of St Andrews
Associate Professor DL Borchers | AI | University of St Andrews
Dr MV Bravington | AI | Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation 

Public Summary: A revolution is taking place in survey technologies for species monitoring. Today, we can monitor whales by photo-ID, or tigers by DNA from hair snags. Soon, anything from microphone arrays to unmanned aircraft will be commonplace survey tools. To estimate population size we use 'capture-recapture', which works by analysing the success rate in detecting the same animals over multiple attempts. Whether animals are recognised by photographs, acoustic recordings, DNA, or their spatial location, some uncertainty in matching samples to individuals is inevitable. The more highly automated the method of recognition, the greater the identity uncertainty becomes - but the benefits in terms of sheer survey coverage are enormous. To exploit these opportunities we need a statistical framework that works by accommodating, rather than eliminating, identity error. This class of problem is usually tackled by reconstructing countless possibilities for the true identities. We will pioneer a new approach that bypasses reconstructions by focusing on density transformations and modelling sample discrepancies. This greatly simplifies the estimation problem and enables very fast processing of large quantities of data. The generality of our approach promises wide application, and will help to monitor the health of the world's most elusive, inaccessible, and valued species.

Total Awarded: $453,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Associate Professor RM Fewster

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 14-UOA-155


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: A radical lipid link for symbiosis

Recipient(s): Dr CJ Eaton | PI | Massey University

Public Summary: Despite their damaging effects on biomolecules, oxygen free radicals are important signalling molecules in eukaryotes. Most are produced as by-products of aerobic respiration, but they are also enzymatically produced by the NADPH oxidase (Nox) complex found in most multicellular organisms including fungi, plants and animals. In plant-associated fungi, free radicals produced by the Nox complex play an essential role in establishment and maintenance of both beneficial and pathogenic plant-fungal interactions. However, little is known about how the fungal Nox complex is regulated. In mammals and plants, lipid signalling plays an important role in controlling both Nox complex assembly and activation. This proposal hypothesises that the fungal Nox complex will be regulated by lipid signalling in a similar manner. This will be investigated in two plant-associated fungi, the grass mutualist Epichloë festucae and rice pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae using genetic and biochemical approaches. Results of this study will provide insight into the relatively unstudied area of fungal lipid signalling and advance the fungal free radical field.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University

Contact Person: Dr CJ Eaton

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 13-MAU-013


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2015

Title: A road map for Cannabinoid Receptor 2 intracellular trafficking: molecular mechanisms of cell surface delivery

Recipient(s): Dr NL Grimsey | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr AJ Vernall | AI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Receptors are specialised proteins which mediate the effects of neurotransmitters, hormones and drugs on cellular function. In order for receptors to function, the cell must synthesise receptors in the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER), fold and modify the new receptor, and then export the receptor from the Golgi to the cell surface. Problems with this pathway can lead to disease, while improved understanding of this pathway may reveal new therapeutic strategies for modifying receptor-mediated cellular functions. Cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2) is a promising drug target in a range of diseases including neuroinflammation, autoimmunity and cancer. We have recently made two novel observations regarding CB2 trafficking: a) a specialised domain in CB2 is required for spontaneous delivery of CB2 to the cell surface, and b) cytoplasmic CB2 can be stimulated to re-distribute to the cell surface by small molecules which interact with CB2. Utilising a multi-disciplinary approach we aim to understand the molecular mechanisms controlling CB2 cell surface delivery. As well as revealing fundamental information about this therapeutically relevant receptor, this research will lay the foundation for exploring a promising and previously untapped approach to CB2 therapeutic design.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr NL Grimsey

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 15-UOA-194


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2012

Title: A scaling law for a renewable energy resource: is gigawatt output from tidal turbine farms realistic?

Recipient(s): Dr MR Vennell | PI | University of Otago
Assoc Prof MG Gerritsen | AI | Stanford University

Public Summary: Power from turbines in strong tidal currents will contribute to the increasing demand for renewable energy. Currently operating tidal turbines are producing around 1 Mega-Watt of energy. Realizing the Giga-Watt potential of large tidal channels such as Cook Strait could contribute significantly to meeting the NZ Government’s target of increasing electricity generation from renewable sources from 73% in 2010 to 90% by 2025. To do this, tidal turbine farms must scale up from a few turbines, to hundreds of turbines. Unlike wind turbine farms, production from large tidal turbine farms does not increase in direct proportion to the number of turbines, because power extraction slows flows along the entire channel. This complex interaction between power extraction and flow speeds has meant that our understanding of how power production increases as a turbine farm grows is extremely limited. The proposed work uses analytical and computational techniques to develop a fundamental scaling law to underpin the relationship between power production and farm size. This scaling law would constitute a significant step towards addressing a core question for tidal current power: is it realistic to meet a significant fraction of our future energy needs by increasing the scale of tidal turbine farms?

Total Awarded: $817,391

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Dr MR Vennell

Panel: EIS

Project ID: 12-UOO-101


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: A self-correcting knowledge base for large-scale knowledge engineering

Recipient(s): Prof IH Witten | PI | University of Waikato
Dr C Legg | AI | University of Waikato

Public Summary: Lack of high-quality, high-coverage world knowledge is a major obstacle in natural language processing, artificial intelligence and text mining. Traditional formal ontology projects aimed to encode such knowledge manually, but proved too limited and inflexible in their reasoning. More recently, user-supplied knowledge repositories such as Wikipedia have attained unprecedented encyclopaedic world knowledge, but largely in textual form. The “Linked Open Data” movement is harvesting Wikipedia’s structured data and combining it with other massive databases, but the knowledge is encoded in a format insufficient for sophisticated reasoning.

This project will design and implement a new model of automated knowledge discovery, patterned after the scientific method, in order to build a formal knowledge base that can genuinely evaluate its own input, growing it automatically with information from sources such as Wikipedia—and many others. Two separate research breakthroughs by the investigators provide fundamental enabling technologies for this ambitious goal (both investigators have won “best paper” awards at international conferences). Unlike other efforts, our proposal capitalizes on an existing, principled, highly structured—but limited—knowledge base to provide an ontological quality control which is distinct from statistical measures of semantic relatedness. The result will be a cutting-edge open-source system for curating knowledge repositories.

Total Awarded: $508,696

Duration: 3

Host: University of Waikato

Contact Person: Prof IH Witten

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 11-UOW-046


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: A spanner in the works: role of the ribosomal DNA repeats in chromosome missegregation

Recipient(s): Dr AR Ganley | PI | Massey University
Prof T Kobayashi | AI | National Institute of Genetics

Public Summary: Faithful separation of the genetic material during cell division is a fundamental feature of life. Chromosome separation failure can lead to disease or death. Therefore, it is critically important to understand what features of chromosomes make them prone to separation failure.
I propose a novel hypothesis: that the ribosomal DNA repeats (rDNA) impede faithful chromosome separation. The rDNA encodes components of the ribosome. However, I was led to this hypothesis by studies showing that the rDNA has other, ancillary functions. In particular, studies in Baker’s yeast have revealed roles for the rDNA in several processes that may impact chromosome separation. Furthermore, Down syndrome in humans results from separation failure of chromosome 21, and the rDNA is present on chromosome 21.
The objectives of this proposal are to characterise the effects of the rDNA on chromosome separation, in both sexual and asexual cell divisions, and to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that underlie these effects. I will take a genetic approach, thus this work will be performed in the model genetic organism, Baker's yeast.
Results obtained from this research will shed new light on the causes of chromosome separation errors, and will suggest reasons why Down syndrome presents so frequently in humans.

Total Awarded: $747,826

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University

Contact Person: Dr AR Ganley

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 10-MAU-072


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: A study of English identity in three British settler societies, circa 1854-1914

Recipient(s): Dr R Vokes | PI | University of Canterbury
Professor M Banks | AI | University of Oxford
Professor E Edwards | AI | University of the Arts London

Public Summary: This project seeks to understand exactly how the sense of English identity was created, and sustained in three British settler societies, circa 1854-1914. Using a comparative study of photographic archives, it will compare the form and style of photographic representations, explore the subject matter of the collections and also explore what is revealed about connections between the various settler societies themselves. The project will contribute to an emerging trend in the Anthropology of Colonialism, to examine settler societies as distinctive social and cultural milieux in their own right and also elaborates an important new strand in Visual Anthropology.

Total Awarded: $266,667

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Dr R Vokes

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 09-UOC-044


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: A terrestrial measurement of the frame dragging of the rotating Earth

Recipient(s): Dr JPR Wells | PI | University of Canterbury
Dr RB Hurst | PI | University of Canterbury
Prof KU Schreiber | AI | Fundamental Station Wettzell

Public Summary: We plan to build a new ring laser gyroscope in the Cashmere Cavern under the Christchurch Port Hills. It will be triangular, with side length about 5 metres, and tilted about 46 degrees to face the south celestial pole. During its operation we shall use new ideas and techniques never before used, to eliminate local disturbances. The laser will be optimized to measure the absolute rotation rate of the Earth, ultimately to better than one part in a billion. We expect to see fluctuations because variations in the westerly winds and ocean currents (averaged over the whole globe) cause compensatory variations in the rotation of the solid Earth. This causes the length of a sidereal day (during which the Earth rotates exactly once relative to the distant stars) to vary by a few thousanths of a second, over time scales of weeks. But our ultimate goal is to observe very subtle effects predicted by the Theory of Relativity: The massive Earth should 'drag' nearby space as it rotates, which should result in a slightly slower rotation rate measured by a gyroscope such as our laser when compared with the rate inferred from observations of very distant astronomical objects.

Total Awarded: $756,522

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Dr JPR Wells

Panel: PCB

Project ID: 10-UOC-041


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: A unified framework for phylodynamic inference of infectious diseases

Recipient(s): Professor AJ Drummond | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr D Welch | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr T Stadler | AI | ETH-Zurich

Public Summary: Infectious diseases cause the illness and death of millions of people annually and are a top priority internationally for public health. To reduce the burden of infectious diseases, we must understand how diseases spread so we can best intervene to stop them. The most promising new tools are fast, accurate and cheap genome-sequencing technologies which provide a flood of potentially informative data about how, when and where diseases spread. The necessary techniques to interpret this valuable data, however, are not yet available. This project will provide a state of the art set of methods and software to analyse, interpret and extract the maximum possible information from this data.

Our international team combines expertise from two fields to achieve this; mathematical epidemiology has been at the forefront of understanding disease spread for 60 years and statistical phylogenetics has been developed to infer the evolutionary history of organisms and their genomes.

The new framework, known as phylodynamics, will allow increasingly accurate predictions of epidemic behaviour and targeting of epidemic response based on pathogen genome sequencing data. Tools developed within this framework will be made available in free open source software to be used immediately by practitioners and researchers worldwide.

Total Awarded: $521,739

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Professor AJ Drummond

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 13-UOA-061


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