Integrating theory and data to model evolution under a changing climate. This project aims to develop an innovative approach that integrates diverse data sources, from genetic sequences to geographic distributions, to improve inference of evolutionary dynamics. This will provide a powerful and efficient new method for understanding species’ responses to climate change, demonstrated by inferring past, current and future climate adaptability in a diverse and ecologically important Australian plant ....Integrating theory and data to model evolution under a changing climate. This project aims to develop an innovative approach that integrates diverse data sources, from genetic sequences to geographic distributions, to improve inference of evolutionary dynamics. This will provide a powerful and efficient new method for understanding species’ responses to climate change, demonstrated by inferring past, current and future climate adaptability in a diverse and ecologically important Australian plant family. Expected outcomes include enrichment of evolutionary theory and software tools to assess species' vulnerability to climate change. These outcomes will bring significant benefits to improve knowledge and protection of Australian biota and maximise returns on Australia's investment in biodiversity databases.Read moreRead less
Using ‘omic and digital technologies toward better fasciolosis control. In Australia, liver fluke disease caused by Fasciola hepatica causes major economic losses to livestock production. Triclabendazole is the most effective drug for parasite control, however, resistance to this drug has emerged and continues to spread in Australia. This project expects to create a novel resource to identify new drug targets, generate new knowledge about the genetic composition of F. hepatica populations and un ....Using ‘omic and digital technologies toward better fasciolosis control. In Australia, liver fluke disease caused by Fasciola hepatica causes major economic losses to livestock production. Triclabendazole is the most effective drug for parasite control, however, resistance to this drug has emerged and continues to spread in Australia. This project expects to create a novel resource to identify new drug targets, generate new knowledge about the genetic composition of F. hepatica populations and unravel the genetic determinants underlying triclabendazole resistance. The curation of functionally-annotated genetic data for F. hepatica populations will underpin the development of diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines to deliver a new generation of intervention strategies to control liver fluke disease.Read moreRead less
Global integration of microbial community and climate data. Microbial communities in the environment control the cycling of carbon and nutrients on Earth, but climate models do not directly incorporate microbial inputs. This interdisciplinary project will link planetary-scale climate modelling data with novel large-scale microbial community analysis, using climate information to provide insight into the fantastic diversity of microbial processes on our planet. The interdisciplinary approach will ....Global integration of microbial community and climate data. Microbial communities in the environment control the cycling of carbon and nutrients on Earth, but climate models do not directly incorporate microbial inputs. This interdisciplinary project will link planetary-scale climate modelling data with novel large-scale microbial community analysis, using climate information to provide insight into the fantastic diversity of microbial processes on our planet. The interdisciplinary approach will inform the next generation of climate models and better predict our future climate’s feedbacks. Conversely, it will make progress on the grand challenge of understanding microbial community function by enabling microbial ecology to be treated as a data-intensive machine learning problem.Read moreRead less
Data-driven phylodynamics: molecular evolution to epidemiology. This project aims to uncover how different environmental and ecological variables drive the emergence of pathogens with increased transmissibility or virulence, known as variants. This will be achieved through extensive analyses of virus genome data.
This project expects to generate new knowledge in the field of pathogen evolution using novel data-driven statistical techniques for genomic analyses.
Expected outcomes of this proje ....Data-driven phylodynamics: molecular evolution to epidemiology. This project aims to uncover how different environmental and ecological variables drive the emergence of pathogens with increased transmissibility or virulence, known as variants. This will be achieved through extensive analyses of virus genome data.
This project expects to generate new knowledge in the field of pathogen evolution using novel data-driven statistical techniques for genomic analyses.
Expected outcomes of this project are a new understanding of the circumstances under which pathogen variants emerge and a suite of statistical tools to exploit the vast genome data available.
This should provide significant benefits by generating new knowledge with the potential to improve biosecurity, agriculture, and heath.
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