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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Macromolecular rate theory (MMRT) and the catalytic power of enzymes

Recipient(s): Professor VL Arcus | PI | University of Waikato
Professor AJ Mulholland | PI | University of Bristol

Public Summary: Enzymes are extraordinary catalysts that enable life. For example, the simple hydrolysis of maltose takes ~11 million years in the absence of an enzyme and yet with the right enzyme the reaction takes just 1 minute, producing the glucose necessary for metabolism! How do enzymes achieve this spectacular rate enhancement? We have developed a theoretical framework that we have called Macromolecular Rate Theory (MMRT) to explain the behaviour of enzymes at different temperatures. MMRT is based on statistical thermodynamics and has been verified against a large experimental dataset. Now we wish extend our theory and test its power to explain fundamental aspects of enzyme catalysis. In particular, we wish to understand the relationship between molecular dynamics and catalysis – one of the most controversial questions in the field. To achieve this, we will undertake a range of new biophysical experiments on model enzymes and use cutting edge molecular dynamics simulations. The marriage of these new data with a more generalized form of MMRT will advance our understanding of how enzymes work and may facilitate the engineering of enzymes with new chemistries in the future. Enzyme design remains one of the grand challenges of modern molecular biology.

Total Awarded: $870,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Waikato

Contact Person: Professor VL Arcus

Panel: PCB

Project ID: 16-UOW-027


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2008

Title: Magma forensics at New Zealand's supervolcanoes

Recipient(s): Prof CJN Wilson | PI | The University of Auckland
Prof JA Baker | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr BLA Charlier | AI | The Open University
Dr DJ Morgan | AI | University of Leeds
Dr DM Pyle | AI | University of Oxford
Dr RJ Wysoczanski | AI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: The Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ), New Zealand, hosts some of the youngest volcanic supereruptions (>500 cubic kilometres of magma) our planet has experienced. We will measure the chemical and isotopic characteristics of minerals and glasses within the quenched eruption products of four TVZ supereruptions using cutting-edge microanalytical techniques. These data and theoretical modelling will allow us to establish the sources from which such vast volumes of magma were generated, time scales over which magma chambers were assembled, and the processes that occurred beneath the supervolcanoes in the millennia, years and weeks before eruptions, ultimately leading to a better understanding of supervolcanoes worldwide.

Total Awarded: $835,556

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Prof CJN Wilson

Panel: ESA

Project ID: 08-UOA-090


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: Making a rod for our own backs: do human actions select for traits that promote invasiveness in animals?

Recipient(s): Dr MAM Gruber | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr DG Chapple | AI | Monash University
Dr BD Hoffmann | AI | Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation 
Professor PJ Lester | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor AR Mercer | AI | University of Otago
Professor GE Robinson | AI | University of Illinois
Associate Professor AV Suarez | AI | University of Illinois

Public Summary: Are humans driving the evolution of invasive species to our own detriment? Humans unwittingly and routinely transport invasive animals and plants around the globe. We hypothesise that this process leads to selection for behavioural traits that enhance invasiveness. Our project will test this hypothesis with the Argentine ant, which is listed among the world’s worst invasive species, and considered the ‘Genghis Khan’ of the ant world. We will study populations from the native and introduced range to assess if: 1) variation in novelty-seeking behaviour exists among populations of ants; 2) this variation in behaviour has a molecular basis; 3) humans have exerted selection pressure on this behaviour; and 4) novelty-seeking promotes invasiveness. We will combine surveys of ecological communities, behavioural experiments, studies of population genetics, and gene and neurochemical expression. The scale of this analysis - from genes to communities, across four continents - is novel and integrative. Our international, multi-disciplinary team is ideally placed to achieve our project goals, with specialists in invasive species behaviour, ecology and evolution, neurobiology and socio-genomics. This novel research will advance invasion biology by elucidating for the first time an underlying mechanism of how evolution and ecology interact to facilitate invasion success.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr MAM Gruber

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 13-VUW-038


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2012

Title: Making a splash: superhydrophobic spacing, symmetry and stretch

Recipient(s): Dr GR Willmott | PI | Industrial Research Ltd
Dr M Taylor | AI | Institute of Environmental Science and Research

Public Summary: Is it possible to tune the symmetry of a drop splash in situ? The importance of drop impacts is instantly familiar to us from raindrops, sprinklers, sprays, ink-jets, painting, and so on. Scientific interest in drop impacts has never been stronger, due to their rich complexity, intrinsic beauty, and the ready availability of high-speed video. Drops landing on extremely water-repellent (‘superhydrophobic’) surfaces are particularly interesting, because they often bounce, or splash and form ‘crowns’. To be superhydrophobic, a surface must have some roughness, so that water stays on top of ‘peaks’, and therefore easily skates across the surface. On man-made surfaces, the peaks can consist of a micrometre-scale array of posts, and it has recently been shown that the symmetry of drop impacts can match the pattern of these posts. We will carry out a pioneering survey of drops bouncing and splashing on superhydrophobic polymer micro-pillars, arranged in various patterns. Subsequently, we will create elastomeric substrates which enable tuning (control) of asymmetric splashes by mechanical stretching. Man-made superhydrophobic surfaces may be useful for condensation management, ice-prevention, or as self-cleaning surfaces, and there are many superhydrophobic surfaces in nature, such as leaves of the lotus plant and butterfly wings.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Industrial Research Ltd

Contact Person: Dr GR Willmott

Panel: EIS

Project ID: 12-IRL-002


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Making Aotearoa Places: The Politics and Practice of Urban Māori Place-making

Recipient(s): Dr RF Kiddle | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: For many Māori, cities can be painful reminders of the negative impacts of colonisation. In the aftermath of land loss, urban developments not only represent, but directly spring from, the disconnection between Māori and their homelands. Today, Māori political influence over urban planning is oftentimes conspicuously absent. However, below this radar, Māori have continued to shape urban form to suit their complex cultural and social needs. Though some suggest that place-making is a professional domain, the experience of Māori plainly demonstrates that place-making is potently political too. This project examines, then, how Māori agency has subverted and thereby shaped urban Aotearoa. It catalogues how Māori whanau have adapted space—sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily—and analyses these adaptations to find the inherent values that influence informal urban design and place-making. The project also asserts that Māori ‘ways of being’ have impacted on non-Māori in ways that have yet to have been explored in detail. Thus the project works to promote outcomes that ensure our cities are recognised as the indigenous spaces they have always really been.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellinton

Contact Person: Dr RF Kiddle

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 17-VUW-018


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Making International Economic Law: The Interaction of Institutions

Recipient(s): Dr GF Sinclair | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: International economic law (IEL) is facing an unprecedented existential crisis, as numerous challenges currently threaten the liberal international economic order. The research will illuminate this moment of crisis in IEL through a critical examination of its institutional formation as a field of practice and study. Most IEL scholarship focuses on the exposition and development of legal doctrine. Yet, remarkably, little attention has been given thus far to the origins and construction of IEL as a field. The aim of the research is to produce the first systematic, critical account of the institutional formation of IEL. Specifically, the research will develop a sociologically grounded, thick historical description of the conditions that have made it possible to construct IEL as a field through the interaction of international institutions. In doing so, the research will challenge widespread assumptions about IEL as a realm of economic ideas put into action, re-framing it instead as a field of complex institutional construction and struggle, and thus more open to rethinking and reform than it may currently appear.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr GF Sinclair

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 17-VUW-038


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Making receptors fly: using mass spectrometry to reveal mechanisms of G protein-coupled receptor function

Recipient(s): Professor DL Hay | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor Dame Carol Robinson | AI | University of Oxford
Professor M Wheatley | AI | University of Birmingham

Public Summary: Mammals sense signals through proteins that are found on the surface of all cells, called receptors. Receptors receive signals ranging from environmental cues, such as odours through to hormones that control metabolism. Receptor activity, and recognition of signals or medicines is carefully controlled. In theory each receptor can have many partners, which fine-tune activity to drive cell function. However, in practice this is difficult to prove. We will develop a new way of working out which receptor partners are the most important in tissues, such as the brain where the receptors actually reside, to help us develop better medicines in the future. To do this, we will use a “cookie-cutter”-like tool, a type of polymer called “SMA”. SMA excises tiny, intact pieces of cell membrane (nanoparticles). We will purify these to obtain membrane nanoparticles that contain model receptors. This pure fraction of undisrupted receptor will be used in mass spectrometry studies to tell us just how complex receptors actually are in their native state. This project addresses the “Holy Grail” of membrane protein research, which is to understand the composition and function of unmodified proteins in native cell membranes.

Total Awarded: $810,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Professor DL Hay

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 16-UOA-175


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Making the switch: cell surface modifications that enable plant-pathogenic fungi to differentiate and maintain infection-related cellular morphotypes during host colonization

Recipient(s): Dr CH Mesarich | PI | Massey University Manawatu
Professor MA Anderson | AI | La Trobe University
Dr KM Plummer | AI | La Trobe University

Public Summary: Filamentous fungi are among the most destructive and economically relevant plant pathogens. Crucial to their success as pathogens is their ability to switch between cellular morphotypes during host infection, with key roles defined in host entry and nutrient acquisition, as well as in the delivery of effector proteins that manipulate host physiology and immunity to promote colonization. Relatively little is known about modifications to the fungal cell surface that enable these organisms to differentiate and maintain infection-related cellular morphotypes during colonization of the hostile host interior. We will provide a more comprehensive understanding of these modifications using the apple scab fungus, Venturia inaequalis, as a model. To achieve this, we will first characterize differences between the morphology, cell surface carbohydrate/protein composition, secreted protein composition, and gene expression of cellular morphotypes differentiated in culture, host tissue, and cellophane membranes (an artificial host environment). We will then use this information to identify cell surface component-encoding genes that can be functionally validated for their role in the morphological differentiation and maintenance of infection-related cellular morphotypes. This research will provide a framework for understanding infection-related cell surface modifications in other filamentous plant-pathogenic fungi, and will offer new insights into how these organisms cause disease.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University Manawatu

Contact Person: Dr CH Mesarich

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 17-MAU-100


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2014

Title: Making war or babies: division of labour and social evolution in parasites

Recipient(s): Professor R Poulin | PI | University of Otago
Professor L Keller | AI | University of Lausanne

Public Summary: Division of labour is a cornerstone of all complex modular systems, and the key to their efficiency and resilience. Among living organisms, division of labour is epitomised by social insects like ants and termites, which consist of a reproductive caste and other castes performing different functions. Yet relationships between colony fitness, functional specialisation and the evolution of sociality are still unresolved. Division of labour has recently been discovered in parasitic flatworms, which form clonal colonies within their hosts comprising distinct reproductive and soldier castes. These colonies face intense competition from other parasite species for control of host resources. Using these social parasites as a simple model system, we will test fundamental hypotheses regarding the evolution of complex, multi-caste societies. With in-vivo and in-vitro experiments, we will explore kin and enemy recognition, communication between castes, behavioural plasticity within castes, and the factors driving shifts in caste ratios within colonies. Our research on this new system will elucidate key evolutionary forces shaping social structure and division of labour.

Total Awarded: $790,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Professor R Poulin

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 14-UOO-029


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Making, Probing, and Understanding Two-Dimensional Quantum Turbulence

Recipient(s): Dr AS Bradley | PI | University of Otago
Professor BP Anderson | AI | University of Arizona
Dr TW Neely | AI | University of Queensland

Public Summary: Fluid turbulence subtly shapes our daily existence — we are living in it. It also plays a dominant role in many applied settings including the design of air and water craft, and the prediction of extreme weather events. Yet fluid turbulence remains poorly understood, even though many of its features are universal, appearing in similar forms for a wide range of fluids, and on very different length scales.

In a flattened quantum fluid made of atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, turbulence is stripped down to its bare essentials: the chaotic interaction of tiny quantum whirlpools moving in only two dimensions. Bose-Einstein condensates also offer a promising pathways for studying turbulence due to their precise experimental control and clear theoretical description. While recent advances in manipulation and imaging enable new routes to creating and understanding turbulence in quantum fluids, fully-developed planar quantum turbulence has yet to be observed in nature. We will develop theoretical tools for making, probing, and understanding fully developed two-dimensional quantum turbulence, with close ties to experiments designed to realise these chaotic quantum states. The outcomes of this work will reveal generic features of fluid turbulence, and exotic behaviour unique to fluids obeying the principles of quantum mechanics.

Total Awarded: $905,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Dr AS Bradley

Panel: PCB

Project ID: 17-UOO-028


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