Future too warm for baby sharks
New research has found as climate change causes the world’s oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survi
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
The Apicomplexa parasites Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium spp are responsible for a tremendous human health burden. Despites powerful genetic tools and high quality genomic databases, half of the predicted genes have no known function or similarity outside the Apicomplexa phylum. I will present two approaches to assign and study function of those novel proteins.
In T. gondii, cellular differentiation from the replicating stage to the bradyzoite tissue cyst stage is the underlying cause of chronic toxoplasmosis. The molecular mechanisms responsible for this developmental switch have long been sought. We identified 11 novel AP2 domain-containing proteins whose mRNA levels are induced in bradyzoites. Knock out, conditional expression, protein binding microarrays and transcriptomics defined one of those factors, AP2IX-9, as a transcription factor apparently acting as a gatekeeper to bradyzoite differentiation.
Despite strong evolutionary winds, recent transcriptome work reveals a similar gene expression cascade unfolding during the replication of Apicomplexa. We hypothesized that functionality, inferred by expression timing, could be utilized to identify novel pan-apicomplexan cell division cycle (panApi-CDC) genes. We identified 649 panApi-CDC genes of which ~25% encode unknown proteins. Those orthologs exhibit a remarkable preservation of timing and abundance suggesting important functions required for all apicomplexan cell division. Folding predictions revealed these proteins as highly disordered and, consistent with this observation, some act as interaction hubs as revealed by mining the Plasmodium interactome. Our ongoing experimental approach is validating and assigning function to those novel proteins.
New research has found as climate change causes the world’s oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survi
A new study shows the coastal protection coral reefs currently provide will start eroding by the end of the century, as the world continues to warm and the oceans acidify. A team of researchers led
A team of scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) won one of the nation’s top science awards at tonight’s ‘Oscars of Australian science’, the Eureka P
An analytical tool will be used to assess the climate risks facing historic World Heritage sites in Africa—the ruins of two great 13th century ports and the remains of a palace and iron-making indus
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Abstract: The Allen Coral Atlas (http://allencoralatlas.org) partnership uses high-resolution satellite imagery, machine learning, and field data to map and monitor the world’s coral reefs at unp
Abstract: Climate change is causing the average surface temperature of the oceans to rise and increasing the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves. In addition, absorption of additional CO2
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Abstract: Invasive species management can be the the subject of debate in many countries due to conflicting ecological, ethical, economic, and social reasons, especially when dealing with a species s
Abstract: Ocean acidification, the increase in seawater CO2 with all its associated consequences, is relatively well understood in open oceans. In shelf seas such as the Great Barrier Reef, processe
Abstract: The backdrop of legends and movies, the deep sea has always been unfathomable because we had no idea what existed there. Once thought to be barren of life, we now know this couldn’t be
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au