Congratulations to Devan, Carol and Nicky for being among the 18 recipients of the ASF “Traversing the COVID Gap” grant this year!
Image from the announcement on the ASF twitter page @AntarcticSF
ARC Linkage grant
The Ferrari Lab has secured an ARC Linkage grant supporting our research into Antarctic fungi and their innate resistance to environmental pressures.
From Belinda’s twitter @ferrari_belinda
Art meets Science
Ah microbes, beloved by ecologists, biochemists and now… photographers? Check out these stunning images captured by two of our budding photographers here at the Ferrari Lab.
Unidentified Antarctic Fungi, Image by Dr Nicole Benaud.
Streptomyces INR7, by HDR candidate Carolina Gutierrez Chavez
For the original post featuring the Antarctic fungi check out Dr Nicole Benaud on twitter @BenaudNic,
for more info on the Streptomyces captured by Carolina check out the original post on The Illuminators website https://www.edi.unsw.edu.au/the-illuminators.
Our latest PhD graduate!
Congratulations to Eden for submitting her PhD thesis! The bioinformatics backbone of the Ferrari lab; wherever life may take you, you’ll undoubtedly excel.
A Day at the Herbarium
InBLOOM exhibit (main) photograph by Alinta Furnell, Possum (inset) photograph by Alinta Furnell, Just keep sciencing (inset) photo by Nicole Benaud, Herbarium collection (inset) photograph by Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney.
We had a wonderful excursion to the Royal Botanical Garden Sydney, where Director of Research & Chief Botanist Brett Summerell gave us a tour of the labs and the Herbarium. We met the herberium’s resident sight-impaired possum, viewed some of the precious collection dating back to 1770 collected by Joseph Banks, and watched the process of photographing and cataloguing currently being performed for the large collection.
We are very excited to working with Brett on a project to characterize some of our Antarctic fungal isolates.
More info on the Botanic Gardens Herbarium can be found on their website: https://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/Science/Branch-Out/What-is-a-herbarium
The Ferrari Lab have recently become members of UNSW’s Evolution & Ecology Research Centre
Welcome to A/Prof Belinda Ferrari and her team, Nicole Benaud, Kate Montgomery, Angelique Ray, Sin Yin (Nicky) Wong, Devan Chelliah, Eden Zhang, Carol Gutierrez Chavez, Dana Tribbia, and Jessica Dai as the Centre’s newest members. Belinda is currently an ARC Future Fellow, Deputy Head of School, and the Director of Research for the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences. She is also a member of the Centre for Marine Science and Innovation. Belinda’s research area is environmental microbiology specialising in Antarctic soil biodiversity and performs discovery-based and applied research. She is passionate about integrating single cell technologies with innovative cultivation methods and genomics to uncover the diversity and functional capacity of uncharacterised soil microbiomes. By doing so, her team recently discovered a novel carbon fixation process where cold adapted bacteria literally ‘live on air’. They coined this microbial-based process ‘atmospheric chemosynthesis’ and published these findings in the prestigious journal Nature. Read the article on it here. The team also works on using microbes as indicators of soil health, for the assessment of ecosystem recovery during bioremediation and for developing site-specific ecotoxicity assessments. Belinda’s future goals are to continue to challenge our understanding of the nutritional limits required for life, while training the next generation of confident scientists.
Congratulations to Kate, Eden and Angelique for earning Antarctic Science Foundation grants
Three Ferrari Lab PhD candidates; Angelique, Eden and Kate, have been awarded grants from the Antarctic Science Foundation. These grants aim to support Australia’s most promising young Antarctic scientists to continue their studies in the face of financial stress brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://antarcticsciencefoundation.org/blog/2020/9/15/covid-grants-awarded
Congratulations to Nic for receiving an Antarctic Science Bursary for 2020
Streptomyces isolated from Antarctic soil.
Photo by Nicole Benaud
Nicole has been awarded an Antarctic Science International Bursary for 2020, which will enable her to extend her research into potential anticancer and antimicrobial natural products from Streptomyces (pictured) and Kribbella bacteria isolated from eastern Antarctic soils.
https://www.antarcticsciencebursary.org.uk/research-activities/
Belinda's interview on ABC about cleaning up Antarctica
Belinda was recently interviewed by Clare Watson for the ABCs Radio National Science Show, along with Darren Koppel from UTS, to discuss bioremediation of residual fuels in Antarctica, and the ecological importance of preserving this pristine environment. She emphasized the current strategies our lab is employing in collaboration with the Australian Antarctic Division to clean up Antarctic soil.
“Australian Antarctic Division is leading, I think, the world in terms of polar remediation. So they've developed some novel technologies. So that's basically digging up all the contaminated soil, putting it in a pile, adding in some nutrients to try and stimulate those organisms. So some, some nitrogen, some carbon, some moisture, even trying to heat it up a little bit so that it comes above freezing, to try and activate that part of the community”.
Check out the interview here:
Waste at Wilkes Station, Antarctica. Photos by Graham Snow https://sites.google.com/site/wilkesstationhistory/home/legacy-waste-and-heritage
Great exit seminar from Nicole and Sarita
Nic talked about "Bacterial natural product gene biomining in polar desert soils". You can read the first publication related to her research here.
Last Friday Sarita and Nicole presented their PhD research to the BABS audience. The seminar was hosted by Belinda.
Sari presented "The toxicity of residual hydrocarbon and polar metabolites on Antarctic soil microbial diversity". You can read more about her research here.