Prizes for MEEP Honours students
MEEP Honours students Charles Foster and Jun Tong have won prizes for their work. For his outstanding Honours research, Charles has been awarded the University Medal in Biology, the Ilma Brewer Prize for Biology Honours, and the Professor Spencer Smith-White Prize in Biology Honours. He also received a prize for his poster at the recent …
Genetics Society of Australasia Conference 2013
Members of the MEEP Lab presented 4 talks and 5 posters at the Genetics Society of Australasia Conference 2013 (July 14–17), held at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The conference was attended by about 250 researchers and students. Two PhD students from MEEP won prizes at the conference. Sebastian Duchene won a …
Prizes for PhD student Martyna Molak
MEEP PhD student Martyna Molak has won the Faculty of Science Postgraduate Research Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement. This prize was awarded for her research into estimating evolutionary rates and timescales using ancient DNA. Martyna has also been awarded a scholarship from the Winton Charitable Foundation. This scholarship supports student projects that span both mathematics …
PhD student wins Science Without Borders scholarship
PhD student Luana Lins has won a 2-year ‘Science Without Borders’ top-up scholarship from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. This will fund her project on the evolution of deep-sea isopods. Science without borders (Ciência sem Fronteiras) is a programme of the Brazilian government that seeks to promote the consolidation, expansion, and …
Honours student receives grant for plant systematics
Honours student Charles Foster has been awarded the 2012 Hansjorg Eichler Research Grant from the Australasian Systematic Botany Society. “Being selected to receive the grant has been a great confidence booster,” said Charles. “It has felt like the first steps away from being an undergraduate student to being a part of the broader scientific community.” …
ARC funding to study ancient human DNA
Dr Simon Ho has been awarded a Discovery Project grant from the Australian Research Council to conduct research on ancient mitochondrial DNA from humans. The work will be led jointly with Dr Wolfgang Haak and Dr Bastien Llamas from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. The work will generate ~200 …
Deep-sea isopods confirmed to be ancient
Evolution, extinction and recolonisation. These processes formed the core of Luana Lins’s exploration into the isopods of the deep sea. This environment was once thought to be lifeless, but four decades ago the abyss was discovered to be teeming with extremely diverse life forms. The discoveries continue today with Luana’s research, which asks the question …
Genome-invading retroviruses are a nasty surprise
An international team of scientists, including Dr Simon Ho from the University of Sydney, has found that the koala genome is slowly being invaded by a retrovirus associated with Chlamydia infection and leukaemia. Unlike other viruses, retroviruses must actually copy their genetic material into the host genome as part of their life cycle. On occasion, …
Zoo polar bear killed by zebra virus
Zoos bring together different animal species that would never encounter each other in the wild. This can have unforeseen consequences. When in 2010 one polar bear died and another fell severely ill in a German zoo, veterinarians were at a loss as to the cause of the symptoms. It has now been shown that the …
Termite collecting in the Top End
Four MEEP lab members recently went on a field trip to the Northern Territory with other termite scientists from Queensland, Japan, and Belgium. We collected the giant Australian termite Mastotermes darwiniensis and other species. M. darwiniensis represents the most primitive termite lineage and is only found in the top end of Australia, where it is …