Professor Sally McCormick, Associate Professor Richard Macknight, Dr Adam Middleton, Dr Torsten Kleffmann, and Dr Paul Gardner have won grants in the latest round of the Royal Society of New Zealand's Marsden Fund.
A/P Macknight was granted $895,000, with which he aims to investigate the importance of a type of translational regulation in controlling plant metabolism and growth. Ultimately, this knowledge will provide ways to develop crops with novel traits, such as high Vitamin C.
Dr Middleton was awarded a Fast Start grant of $300,000 to further his work on the ubiquitylation of proteins. This work could lead to the development of improved treatment for cancer and other diseases.
Prof McCormick was awarded $957,000 for her study of how “bad” cholesterol particles are cleared from our blood, which could lead to novel cholesterol-lowering therapies. Dr Kleffmann is an associate investigator on this project.
Read about the research planned by Prof McCormick and Dr Kleffman on the Royal Society's website.
Dr Gardner, who will be joining the Department of Biochemistry in early 2018, will be investigating how bacteria regulate their immune systems. He is the associate investigator of the project, which is lead by Associate Professor Peter Fineran of the Microbiology and Immunology Department.