Globally, zebrafish are making a very significant impact on biomedical research. Zebrafish have a number of attributes that make them ideal models for the study of development and disease, including: - adults are relatively small, so housing is cheap - eggs are transparent, so early developmental processes can be visualized easily - development is rapid - organs are made in 1-7 days - zebrafish are vertebrates and thus have a gene complement very similar to humans - large numbers of eggs are pro ....Globally, zebrafish are making a very significant impact on biomedical research. Zebrafish have a number of attributes that make them ideal models for the study of development and disease, including: - adults are relatively small, so housing is cheap - eggs are transparent, so early developmental processes can be visualized easily - development is rapid - organs are made in 1-7 days - zebrafish are vertebrates and thus have a gene complement very similar to humans - large numbers of eggs are produced each week from a single mother, aiding experimentation - ENU mutagenesis screens have generated thousands of useful mutants, including an increasing number that accurately model human genetic diseases - high-resolution imaging of RNA and protein expression in whole embryos is easy - drugs and chemicals can be easily tested for activities in zebrafish by adding them to the water Becuase of these attributes, zebrafish are becoming the model organism of choice for the study to human development and disease - indeed, the zebrafish field is growing at three times the rate of the mouse field. The international biomedical community has invested very heavily in infrastructure to aid the zebrafish community in realising the potential of this model. In Australia we have very strong basic research teams whom have embraced zebrafish mdoels. However, we lag behind other parts of the world in that, as yet, we have not had much specific funding allocated to animal model infrastructure. This Enabling Grant will build unique infrastructure by bringing together the zebrafish community with two areas in which Australia is very strong - genomics and biodiversity. This will result in a greatly enhanced ability to determine how genes work, and a pipeline for screening Australia's rich source of natural products and chemical libraries for activites against common human diseases such as cancer, dementia, and muscle diseases using zebrafish models.Read moreRead less
Australian Drosophila Biomedical Research Support Facility
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,008,895.00
Summary
Breakthroughs in biomedical research frequently come from the study of model organisms, one of the most important of which is the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster. In Australia, Drosophila is used in biomedical research with a particular focus on understanding processes that result in human cancer or are associated with birth defects or inherited diseases. Drosophila-based research is funded by bodies such as the Anti-Cancer Foundation, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NH an ....Breakthroughs in biomedical research frequently come from the study of model organisms, one of the most important of which is the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster. In Australia, Drosophila is used in biomedical research with a particular focus on understanding processes that result in human cancer or are associated with birth defects or inherited diseases. Drosophila-based research is funded by bodies such as the Anti-Cancer Foundation, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NH and MRC) and the National Institutes of Health of the USA. This proposal seeks to establish infrastructure support for Drosophila research in the form of a central collection of key research stocks, a centralized facility for the importation of genetically defined stocks and a facility for the generation of transgenic Drosophila for use in biomedical research.Read moreRead less
We propose to establish the Australian Mouse Brain Mapping Consortium which is a national network of facilities allowing Australian researchers to better characterise mouse models of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease and stroke. Just as accurate maps were key to the voyages of geographic discovery in the 17th and 18th century, improved methods of mapping structural and functional changes in the brain of mouse models of neurological disease will be key to discovery in the neurosci ....We propose to establish the Australian Mouse Brain Mapping Consortium which is a national network of facilities allowing Australian researchers to better characterise mouse models of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease and stroke. Just as accurate maps were key to the voyages of geographic discovery in the 17th and 18th century, improved methods of mapping structural and functional changes in the brain of mouse models of neurological disease will be key to discovery in the neurosciences in the 21st century . For the Consortium the cartographic tools will be magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), microscopy and sophisticated computational methods of mapping brain structure and function. Participants in the Consortium are internationally recognised leaders in brain imaging based at Monash University, the Howard Florey Institute, the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute and the Centre for Magnetic Resonance and the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland.Read moreRead less