Roo genome and other projects off the ground after ARC grants

Prof Jennifer Marshall Graves' long-awaited Kangaroo Genome Project is up and hopping after last week's federal government announcement of funding for six new Australian Research Council Centres.

Graves' new ARC Kangaroo Genome Centre at the Australian National University will receive federal funding of $3,321,244 over the next five years, or $664,228 per year.

Other life science areas to benefit from the latest ARC centre funding are bioinformatics and bioscience. At the University of Queensland, Prof Mark Ragan's ARC Centre for Bioinformatics, in the Institute for Molecular Biology, will receive $3,960,835 over the next five years.

And Monash University has acquired the ARC Centre for Structural and Functional Microbial Genomics, headed by Prof Ben Adler, which received a $4,897,495 grant.

But the funding limits Graves and her colleagues to short hops, rather than giant leaps. "We can't do the whole genome, so we're going target the X-chromosome," Graves said.

Graves says the aim is to determine how the organisation of genes on the X differs from that of the autosomes, and to investigate "interesting bits" like the XIST locus, which harbours a gene that inactivates the maternally derived X in marsupials.

The marsupial X will make for interesting comparisons with the larger human X, which Graves believes has appropriated fragments from other chromosomes.

She says the human X seems to have lost tumour-suppressor genes, or they have assumed new functions, while accumulating genes involved in sex and reproduction, and intelligence.

"These are male-advantage genes," says Graves. "If a new allele pops up, it is immediately exposed to sexual selection pressure from females.

Graves says the clustering of genes for intelligence the X is consistent with the idea that intelligence in humans is a form of sexual ornamentation, equivalent to the peacock's tail.

Visual stimulus

At UQ, Mark Ragan said the ARC Centre for Bioinformatics for would to develop new ways of representing biological information visually. "We're going to be addressing the way that information in the genome gets turned into cellular form and function in mammalian cells," he said.

"It will involve analysing large amounts of genomic data to understand how genes and gene products work together in networks, and in complex systems, and how these systems shape cell form and function.

Ragan promised "a relentless systems approach" to understanding the genome-phenome transition, using real data. A substantial part of the centre's work will involve reviewing image and model databases, as well as DNA and protein databases.

The new centre will use visual languages, and powerful new algorithms, to develop a standard protocol for representing systems visually, and trying to bring all the parts together to produce modules and prototypes of a visual cell.

"It's virtually the only way the human brain can interpret data sets this big," Ragan said.

The new ARC Centre for Structural and Functional Microbial Genomics will apply the latest advances in microbial genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics to study the genetic basis of pathogenic virulence in microbes.

The centre will apply its results to controlling microbial diseases, and to developing anti-microbial agents and vaccines for the for Australia's poultry, pig, sheep and cattle industries.

Its focus will be on genes involved in microbial growth and survival, and in pathogen-host interactions.