Biochemistry

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2011 Marsden successes

Three Biochemistry Department researchers were successful in the Marsden funding announced today. Associate Professor Catherine Day will receive $985,000, Dr Liz Duncan $345,000, and Dr Stephanie Hughes is associate investigator on Professor Cliff Abraham's $985,000 grant.

Assoc Prof Catherine Day's research will focus on the regulation of ubiquitylation. Ubiquitin is a small molecular "tag", a bit like an address label that is attached to proteins to modify their activity and stability. Regulation of ubiquitylation has emerged as a major mechanism for the control of many cellular events, and malfunctions in these events manifest as diseases such as cancer. Attachment of ubiquitin to proteins depends on a cascade of three enzymes (referred to as E1, E2 and E3) but little is known about how they function. Assoc Prof Day's project will investigate the functions of  the E2 enzyme in detail, and characterise how the E2 interacts with the E3 enzyme.

Dr Liz Duncan is interested in how an animal's environment can affect its morphology and behaviour at the genetic level. Some animals, such as bees and aphids, can become what is in effect a different animal in response to environmental cues. A pea aphid, for example, reproduces asexually in summer but as winter approaches it begins to reproduce sexually and produces eggs. The ovaries and embryos of sexual and asexual aphids are morphologically distinct, and there are also differences in the genes that are expressed and where they are expressed during oogenesis and embryogenesis. Dr Duncan will investigate how environmental changes are detected by, and responded to, by the pea aphid genome.

Dr Stephanie Hughes is working with Prof Cliff Abraham trying to find out how memory works. The hippocampus is a region of the brain that is critical for memory, and it is one of only two regions where new nerve cells are generated throughout life. Prof Abraham and Dr Hughes intend to develop technology to allow them to selectively activate and deactivate new nerve cells in mouse brains, allowing them to determine the cells' functions with respect to memory. They also intend to compare the activity of older and newer nerve cells during learning.