Australia innovates beef cattle genetics

The Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI) develops new research that will give northern Australia's producers advice on how to improve productivity and profitability of tropical beef cattle herds.

 

2010 Queensland International Fellowship recipients, Dr Brian Burns from Rockhampton, and Dr Ralf Dietzgen from Brisbane, are both leading researchers with the DEEDI.

 

 

He said that there was far more to genetics than just knowing the sequence of building blocks in a DNA molecule.

 

''The 'more' is known as the study of 'epigenetics', that is, the study of factors that have the potential to influence the expression of a number of traits by turning certain genes on or off,'' he said.

 

Dr Dietzgen is working on a novel project to make protein interactions visible in living plant cells using fluorescent labelling of the virus proteins and state of the art laser scanning microscopy.

 

''This research will give us a better understanding of what is going on at the molecular level between plants and the viruses that infect them. We will be able to use such understanding to strengthen our work on crop improvement, environmental stress tolerance, biofuel feedstocks and studies of climate change. This area of research will provide new insights into how plants and viruses interact to cause disease and will ultimately contribute to securing global food supplies and therefore the future of agriculture in Queensland,'' Dr Dietzgen said.