Upcoming events hosted by or involving Genetics Otago will be listed here. Please check back regularly for updates. A calendar of events that may be of interest to our members can be found at the bottom of this page and in the sidebar of other pages on this site, please note that this includes events hosted outside of Genetics Otago.
GO Annual Symposium
Genetics Otago has partnered with the Australasian Epigenetics Alliance to bring the AEpiA Conference to NZ for the first time, held 1st – 5th December 2024. The GO Symposium will begin with a shared session with the AEpiA delegates on the morning of the 5th of December and will then continue in its regular format for the remainder of the day.
As usual, the Symposium will highlight the fantastic research being done by GO members from around the country through presentations, posters and awards.
Date: Thursday 5th December 2024
Time: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Venue: Hutton Theatre, Otago Museum (for those joining from Christchurch and Wellington – a venue will be confirmed soon).
Programme
A draft programme will be available here soon.
Registration
Registration for this event is now open via the button below.
Abstract submission is part of the registration process, all abstracts must be submitted by no later than 5:00 pm on the 14th of November. Registration will close at 12:00 noon on Wednesday 20th November. Please keep the link provided at the end of your registration to make changes to your responses up until the closing date.
Registration Fee
Due to budget constraints, we will be charging a $50 per person registration fee for all attendees to subsidise the costs associated with the Symposium. We have received confirmation that this registration fee can be paid from S accounts, and if you are in a position to make a donation on top of this fee, we would gladly receive it. However, we do not want the payment to be a barrier to attendance, so if you are not in a position to make a payment, please contact us go@otago.ac.nz.
Payment Methods
Payments from an S account (or other University account) can be journaled to Genetics Otago account GL.10.LH.A14.2541 via your finance associate. Please include the surname(s) of the registrants that the payment covers in the narration.
If you need to make payment using funds from outside the University this can be arranged via the Cashier’s Office. Please contact us for details (go@otago.ac.nz).
Awards
The Annual Genetics Otago Awards including The Genetics Otago Award, Outstanding Mentor Awards, Student Supervisor Award, Publication Awards, Poster Awards and Science Communication Prize will be presented at the conclusion of the Symposium and nominations for these are now open.
Award nominations close at 12:00 noon on Wednesday 20th November (except for Poster and Science Communication Awards which are at 5 pm 14th of November) and should be submitted by email to go@otago.ac.nz.
Full details of the awards can be found here: Award Details.
Oxford Nanopore Technology Workshop
Join us at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, Dunedin, for a one day Oxford Nanopore Technology symposium. This event, jointly hosted by Genomics Aotearoa and the Genetics Otago ONT hub, will feature research talks highlighting different ONT use cases, a technical sequencing demonstration and an EPI2ME workshop.
This is an in-person event being held on Friday, December 6th at the Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka / University of Otago campus.
Registration for this event is free of charge.
This event is sponsored by ONT, and is supported by the Otago Genomics Facility.
Contact tyler.mcinnes@otago.ac.nz for any queries.
CRISPR Workshop
Details coming soon. Proposed date: 6th December.
Calendar of Events
The below is a calendar of events hosted by GO as well as events hosted by others that may be of interest to our members. If you have an event you would like us to include please contact us here.
We have a special seminar from Dr Jane MacDonald and colleagues based at the Centre for Women’s Health Research, Wellington Faculty of Health, Victoria University of Wellington. They will present ‘He Tapu Te Whare Tangata (the sacred house of humanity)’, a randomised controlled trial of self-testing for HPV infection in Māori women.
Please see attached for more information.He tapu te whare tangata_poster
The OMSRS Masters and Honours Student Speaker awards, and Annual General Meeting will be held on 4th November 2020 at 5pm in the Barnett Lecture Theatre.
10 speakers have been selected from a range of departments. A prize of $500 will be awarded for the best presentation, and a prize of $250 will be awarded to the runner up.
We will also hold a brief Annual General Meeting during the break, and announce the winner and runners up of our annual Science Writing Prize, sponsored by Kainic Medical Communications.
Approximate timings are given below.
Departmental seminar series continues with Dr Xochitl Morgan from Microbiology & Immunology. Her seminar is entitled ‘Understanding ecosystem dysfunction in inflammatory bowel disease’.
Please see attached for more information: Morgan_poster
You are warmly invited to attend MapNet 2020, a free online conference across three ~90 minute sessions on Monday 16 and Tuesday 17 November 2020. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Mātauranga and Te Ao Māori to guide genetics research: better outcomes for people and for science’.
As you know, the MapNet conference has historically been a meeting place for the applied genetics community in Aotearoa, with a particular focus on gene mapping in commercial species. However, in recent years both the community and the research has expanded significantly, with talks at last year’s conference covering human and health genomics, primary sector genomics, ecological and evolutionary genomics, microbial genomics and Māori kaupapa / Te Ao Māori in genetics teaching and research. This year, in an online format, we have decided to focus on the theme of “Mātauranga and Te Ao Māori to guide genetics research: better outcomes for people and for science” as a common thread that links all aspects of applied genetics in Aotearoa.
Ngā mihi nui – a huge thanks to the amazing speakers who have kindly agreed to share their tohungatanga – expertise. We are particularly thrilled to start the conference with a plenary presentation from Prof Alex Brown, an internationally leading Aboriginal clinician/researcher who has worked his entire career in Aboriginal health. We are also honoured to have Dr Kimiora Henare, Dr Phil Wilcox, Dr Jonni Koia and Assoc Prof Maui Hudson presenting during the conference.
Please see below for our schedule, you are most welcome to join us for any or all sessions!
Please register for the event here: https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/mapnet-2020-matauranga-and-te-ao-maori-to-guide-better-genetics-research-tickets-126764131931
Closer to the time, we will be in touch with registered attendees with details of how to attend each session via zoom.
Noho ora mai,
MapNet 2020 organising committee: Anna Santure, Annabel Whibley, Thomas Buckley, Libby Liggins, Jibran Tahir and Phil Wilcox
Monday 16 November: Indigenous health genomics and Māori kaupapa/Te Ao Māori in human health genomics
11:30-11:40am: Welcome
11:40am-12:20pm: Plenary from Prof Alex Brown, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and University of Adelaide (https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/alex.brown)
12:20-12:40pm: questions and discussion
-break-
2:00-2:30pm: Dr Kimiora Henare (https://unidirectory.auckland.ac.nz/profile/k-henare)
2:30-3:00pm: Dr Phil Wilcox (https://scholar.google.co.nz/citations?user=v5W0yNUAAAAJ&hl=en)
3:00-3:20pm: joint questions and discussion
Tuesday 17 November: Māori kaupapa/Te Ao Māori in genetics research
2:00-2:30pm: Dr Jonni Koia (https://www.waikato.ac.nz/staff-profiles/people/jkoia)
2:30-3:00pm: Assoc Prof Maui Hudson (https://www.waikato.ac.nz/fmis/about/staff/maui)
3:00-3:20pm: joint questions and discussion
3:20-3:30pm: closing
Genetics Otago will be hosting a Symposium for all members on the 18th of November 2020. This is an in-person Symposium, utilising Zoom to connect three main rooms in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington, to showcase speakers from across Genetics Otago in this flagship event for 2020. Details will be updated here as they become available.
Date: 18th November 2020
Time: 9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Locations:
Dunedin: BIG13 Seminar Room, Ground Floor Biochemistry Building
Christchurch: 7.04
Wellington: UOW.D31
We have special seminar on Monday 11 am by Dr Veronika Sander, from the University of Auckland titled “Using human kidney organoids to study acute kidney injury”.
Location is the D’ Ath Hercus building.
The Health Sciences’ Divisional Research Committee is holding a presentation where we will discuss proposal format (EoI and Full), application faults and what the panel is looking for.
Current grant holders will also be present to share their experiences.
Zoom details: https://otago.zoom.us/j/99339176722?pwd=aEFqelp6VzBMT2ZlWEFmR08xczNjQT09, Password: 872997
Dr Nathan Kenny, Oxford Brookes University:
The freshwater sponge Ephydatia muelleri: a new tool for tracing genome evolution across the animal tree of life.
Genomes of non-bilaterians are vital for understanding the evolution of animal multicellularity and the origin of the first metazoan-specific cell types. However, within the non-bilaterian metazoans, such as sponges, ctenophores and cnidarians, only a handful of genomes have been sequenced, and most are too fragmented to allow firm inference of the genomic characters of the earliest animals. To address this longstanding problem, we sequenced and analyzed the 326 Mb genome of the freshwater sponge Ephydatia muelleri to high contiguity, capturing its 23 chromosomes on 24 scaffolds.
E. Mueller has a metazoan-typical genome architecture, highly shared synteny with chordates, and representative levels of DNA methylation. E. Mueller is also a widespread, highly practical model system. Its well-assembled genome and ready utility as a model allows testing of hypotheses about gene duplication and adaptation to novel conditions, as well as providing a firm anchor for exploring the genomic evolution of animal life.
Dr Alana Alexander, Department of Anatomy, University of Otago
Linking past to future: using genomics to ‘time-travel’
Molecular approaches are useful for inferring how populations have responded to selective pressures and past environmental change. My research utilises the “time-traveling” ability of genomics, advanced computational tools, and behavioural, ecological, and biogeographic data to make inferences about the processes influencing genetic diversity within and among populations. These inferences range from global spatial and deep temporal scales (e.g. selection and the worldwide impact of climate fluctuations on global sperm whale populations over the last 125,000 years), to regional spatial scales across recent time scales (e.g. processes influencing the movement of genes and individuals across hybrid zones over the last few decades).
As a Māori scientist, I also maintain a strong interest in ensuring that my research can be used to support kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga of resources within the rohe of iwi and hapū.
Dr Kiel Hards, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Otago
Understanding synergy, mutualism and redundancy in microbial metabolism
From enzymes to ecosystems, biology exhibits cooperative behaviours at all levels. Whether it is enzyme cooperativity or plant pollination, the biological responses of multiple factors tend to be greater than the sum of their isolated components. However, reductionist approaches to bacterial physiology tend to overlook the intra- and inter-organism relationships of metabolic pathways, leading to unexpected outcomes in vivo or in situ. Increased understanding of these phenomena are required for diverse research outcomes, ranging from improved rationale design of antibiotics to enhanced understanding of global gas cycles.
In this seminar, I will cover three recent projects where I am reconstructing the molecular interactions of microbial metabolic pathways at various levels:
- Interspecies electron transfer and its role in supporting pathogen-commensal interactions
- Functional redundancy in terminal oxygen reduction and the need for dual inhibition in Tuberculosis therapies
- Mixotrophy in thermoacidophilic methanotrophs and why extremophiles retain metabolic flexibility
