Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing ocean acidification, leading to adverse impacts on shell-forming organisms such as sea urchins, cold water corals and plankton.

Around half of carbon dioxide generated by human activities such as burning fossil fuels is now stored in the world’s oceans, particularly the colder Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. This increases the acidity of the ocean, which limits the ability of marine organisms to form shells and other external structures.

Scientists at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC in Hobart are studying a shellforming variety of plankton about the size of a sand grain to find out the effects of carbon dioxide fluctuations in the geological past.

They have found shells are lighter at times of high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, suggesting that shell-forming organisms in the Southern Ocean have already begun to experience the impacts of ocean acidification.

For more information: Australian GreenhouseOffice, Andrea Mettenmeyer,

Tel: +61 2 6274 1859, communications@greenhouse.gov.au

The OPAL reactor and new neutron beam facility, managed by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in Sydney’s south, officially opens on Wednesday 18 April 2007.

Costing $400 million to build, the reactor was described by ANSTO’s Executive Director, Dr. Ian Smith as “the jewel in the crown” of Australian nuclear research.

“The OPAL reactor and its neutron beam instrument facility will rank it as one of the top three research reactors in the world,” he said.

“The OPAL facility is already attracting major interest from local and international scientists and will promote great scientific growth.”

The new instruments at OPAL will help scientists to analyse materials at the atomic level and help gain more understanding, for example, of essential biological processes in the body, how to improve manufacturing methods or how to better store food in order to prolong shelf life.

The OPAL reactor will also allow ANSTO to continue to provide half a million nuclear medicines a year to Australians and irradiate silicon for the semiconductor industry.

For more information: Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO),

Dr. Ian Smith, Tel: +61 2 9717 9575, www.ansto.gov.au

Analysing the genomes of Australia’s iconic marsupials will provide insight into how they turn off and on the development of the early embryo; give birth to very underdeveloped young, and why marsupial milk changes radically over the months of lactation.

This knowledge could lead scientists to new treatments for premature births, better milk production in cows, as well as novel antibiotics. Marsupials fill an evolutionary gap between the distantly related birds/reptiles and the more closely related placental mammals (such as humans and cows).

The Tammar wallaby (a member of the kangaroo family) has been the subject of many classic genetic, physiological, developmental and ecological studies by marsupial researchers in Australia.

Now the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF) has partnered with the National Institutes of Health (USA) to sequence the genome of Tammar wallaby.

Comparing the wallaby genome with other organisms enables scientists to identify regions of similarity and difference, which can provide clues about the structure and functions of genes invaluable to health and agricultural research.

For more information: Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF), Elizabeth Kuczek,

Tel: +61 7 3365 4392 e.kuczek@agrf.org.au

Ocean acidification, caused by increasing amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolving in the ocean, poses a serious threat to marine ecosystems.

Increasing acidity affects the ability of some planktonic organisms to form shells, and is expected to change the species composition of plankton, with flow-on effects to higher levels of the food web.

Scientists at the Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre have been studying the effects of ocean acidification on shell-forming, planktonic organisms, during research voyages to the Southern Ocean.

In recent shipboard experiments, planktonic communities were incubated in 650 litre ‘minicosm’ tanks, under carbon dioxide concentrations ranging from one to four times present-day levels. Responses of phytoplankton, protozoa, bacteria and viruses were measured both at the cellular and community levels, and are currently being analysed.

Early results from laboratory experiments indicate that increasing levels of carbon dioxide significantly affect the structural integrity of shell-forming plankton.

For more information:

Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Simon Wright,

Tel: +61 3 6232 3338, simon.wright@aad.gov.au

University of Melbourne researchers have isolated a genetic ‘switch’ that can be turned on or off to alter the development of sex cells in plants.

The discovery brings understanding of fertilisation in plants to a new level, and is an important step towards growing greater amounts of food through increased fertilisation of crop plants. Professors Mohan Singh and Prem Bhalla, who head the University’s Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Laboratory in the Faculty of Land and Food Resources, analysed the genetic makeup of white lilies and other flowering plants to identify a germline-restrictive silencing factor (GRSF).

The GRSF is a protein, which is present in all plants during growth and can be turned off to effectively block the development of sex cells in plants.

Plants that produce pollen-causing hay fever may be able to have their sex cell development – and therefore pollen production – turned off.

For more information: University of Melbourne,

Prof. Mohan Singh, Tel: +61 3 8344 5051,

mohan@unimelb.edu.au

The University of Melbourne’s Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Pharmacology have over recent years identified cone shell venom as a potential treatment for chronic pain in humans.

Researchers continue to develop the research into a commercialised product. One of the venom peptides identified is currently in phase two of clinical trials.

Cone snails (cone shells) inject their prey with toxic venom, which paralyses and eventually kills. Some 30 humans have died from cone snail envenomation.

The venom is a cocktail of potent peptides that each target specific nerve channels or receptors involved in vital body functions, such as muscle contraction.

Associate Professor Bruce Livett who is leading the research says the finding that cone snail analgesics are effective in humans, has opened a Pandora’s Box of potential drugs from the sea for commercial development as clinical pharmaceuticals.

For further information: University of Melbourne’s Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Pharmacology, Dr. Bruce Livett,

Tel: +61 3 8344 2322/5911, Email:

b.livett@unimelb.edu.au

Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA is arguably the greatest of the 20th century. The significance lies in its profound influence on our understanding of the nature of life and in its striking demonstration of the power of two disciplines – physics and biology – collaborating to solve a major problem.

The method employed by Watson and Crick was crystallography, a method originating with the Australian father and son team of W.L. and W.H. Bragg, and it was the younger Bragg’s laboratory in which the DNA structure was solved.

Today, crystallography of proteins remains a profoundly important technique at the heart of biotechnology. But crystallography relies on the creation of a crystal, and the most interesting molecules will not crystallise. The goal of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science is to develop, using the most modern X-ray sources on the planet, an approach to protein crystallography that removes the need to make a crystal.

For further information: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science, Tania Smith,

Tel: +61 3 8344 5444,

tnsmith@ph.unimelb.edu.au

Want to throw away your reading glasses?

When we read or look at something close, the flexible lens inside our eye changes shape to provide the close focus required.

However, as we age, that lens progressively becomes harder, and its ability to change shape is reduced. Because of this, almost everyone over the age of 45 needs glasses for reading and other close work.

The Vision Cooperative Research Centre is developing a revolutionary flexible gel lens to replace the old hardened lens and restore natural vision. It acts like the natural young lens – changing shape and focus so that people can see for reading and other close activities. Implanting the gel would be a simple procedure similar to current cataract surgery. The hardened lens contents are removed, and then replaced with the gel, which begins as a liquid and is then set in place with light.

Patents on key technologies have been granted in international regions.

For more information: The Vision Cooperative

Research Centre, Kylie Evans,

Tel: +61 2 9385 7406, www.visioncrc.org

VESKI’s main initiative – to return successful Australian expatriates with outstanding skills in science, technology and design – is paying off with some inspiring work.

In 2004, VESKI’s – Victorian Endowment for Science, Knowledge and Innovation – inaugural Fellow Professor Andrew Holmes returned from Cambridge University to work in a new $100 million Bio21 Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Institute. One of the most important research areas to emerge since has been the development of cheap plastic solar cells.

Professor Marcus Pandy has also relocated – from the University of Texas to the University of Melbourne – and is developing new non-invasive tools to treat joint disease such as osteoarthritis.

And Dr. Gareth Forde returned from Cambridge University to join the Monash University Department of Chemical Engineering to work on a new generation of DNA-based vaccines and streamline the time in which vaccines are produced to as little as two weeks.

For more information: VESKI, Julia Page,

Tel: +61 3 9635 5700,

www.veski.org.au

Smoke-belching coal-fired power stations and factories and fossil fuel-guzzling motor vehicles may be seen as the big villains of the global climate change debate, but they aren’t the only ones contributing to the greenhouse effect.

Australia’s hundreds of millions of cattle, sheep, pigs and other agricultural animals – not to mention our native fauna – also release significant amounts of methane and other gases into the atmosphere.

To better understand global environmental issues such as the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion, we need to understand the sources and transformation of atmospheric gases, including those produced by animals.

The Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Wollongong is studying the impact of agricultural animals on atmospheric gases in different climatic regions of Australia. Part of its monitoring program involves a unique partnership with the famous Ghan train, which travels between Alice Springs and Darwin and will carry an FTIR spectrometer that measures atmospheric gases as it crosses the continent.

For more information: University of Wollongong,

Prof. David Griffith, Tel: +61 2 42215490,

griffith@uow.edu.au