ARC Discovery Projects success

This project aims to investigate how bacterial membrane vesicles transport their cargo to the nucleus of cells and its impact on host cell functions.

Bacteria use membrane vesicles as a means of communication with the host, but the full extent of their effects on host cells has yet to be fully elucidated.

The project expects to generate new knowledge in the field using cutting-edge imaging and molecular biology approaches.

The work should provide significant benefits, particularly towards the development of membrane vesicles in gene therapy, gene editing and other applications.

IMPACT | These bacterial vesicles may be used to deliver DNA/genes into cells or even as vaccines.

Sperm mediate inheritance by transmitting DNA and associated chemical (epigenetic) modifications to offspring.

Epigenetic modifications are heritable chemical alterations to DNA and associated proteins that package the DNA in all cells. This allows specific DNA sequences to be accessible and genes to be turned on, or other sequences to be maintained in a silent state, including repetitive and viral sequences that have accumulated in our DNA over generations.

Our researchers hypothesise that epigenetic modifications protect DNA from mutations by silencing these potentially damaging repetitive sequences.

Using sperm precursor cells, our team will determine whether loss of specific epigenetic modifications permits mutations, and whether these mutations are transmitted by sperm to offspring.

This work will contribute a broader understanding of whether epigenetics protects cells against mutations and whether altering sperm epigenetics could permit new mutations that affect offspring phenotype, adaptation and evolution.

As chemicals, drugs and diet can affect epigenetic function, the studies will also contribute to determining how the environmental impacts on epigenetics affect inheritance and may alter agricultural and healthcare outcomes.

This project aims to experimentally validate the largest ever collection of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) within the gut microbiome.

The project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of bacteriophage biology and genomics by using the innovative approaches of wet-lab and bioinformatic genome analyses.

Expected outcomes of the project include the discovery of novel phages using bioinformatics, wet-lab validation of their activity and characterisation of their potential to contribute new bacterial host metabolism.

This should provide benefits including advancing our understanding of bacteriophages, improved bioinformatic software, and a characterised collection of commercially valuable bacterial strains and phages.