From KAREN wiki

The role of the toxin-antitoxin repertoire in pathogen survival and persistence

This project, funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, involves collaborators at

Newcastle University The University of Otago The University of Waikato Waikato Hospital The project is lead by Associate Professor Vic Arcus of The University of Waikato's Department of Biological Sciences. Tuberculosis (TB) is the most deadly of infectious diseases. In New Zealand TB disproportionately affects lower socio-economic groups and immigrants. Treatment is by courses of antibiotics lasting six months or longer. TB in humans is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and in cattle by the related Mycobacterium bovis. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is able to escape the effects of many antibiotics, which attack growing cells, by lying dormant.

Project Leader Dr. Vic Arcus

There is direct evidence linking this ability to lie dormant and the bacterium's resistance to antibiotics to a set of "PIN-domain" proteeins found in the bacterium. This project seeks to find entirely new ways of controlling tuberculosis by understanding the ways these proteins operate and are controlled. A range of tools are being used to achieve this.

Project description from the Tertiary Education Commission

Bioinformatics

Among the resources the project is using is the Genbank database of gene sequences. An up-to-date copy of this database is made available to New Zealand researchers by the NZ Biomirror. In early 2008 this database yielded the genomes of 580 microbes of interest to the project. By the beginning of 2009 that number had more than doubled to 1180, illustrating rapid growth in the volume of genetic information available to researchers.

X-Ray Crystallography

One technique being used to determine the precise structure of the proteins being studied is X-ray crystallography. This involves firing a beam of X-rays at a sample and studying the way the X-rays are scattered after striking the sample. Tne catch is that there is no source of such a beam in New Zealand.

Connections between KAREN and research networks in the United States allow researchers at The University of Waikato remote control of a synchrotron operated in California by Stanford University , where some of this work is still carried out. But in 2008 the project began to use the Australian Synchrotron, located in Melbourne.

Where this earlier meant sending staff to Melbourne, it is now possible to control the synchrotron from a computer in New Zealand, saving time and, yes, money. Samples are sent to Melbourne. Once the researcher's scheduled time slot on the synchrotron begins, the synchrotron is controlled from New Zealand and the resulting data returned to New Zealand using KAREN's trans-Tasman link. Because of the way time on the synchrotron has been scheduled, this work has to date been done from Auckland, but 2009 should see researchers based in Hamilton and elsewhere able to use this very expensive piece of equipment without leaving the building.

The Australian Synchrotron
Photograph: John O'Neill