Agricultural genetic stories from the International Congress of Genetics in Melbourne.

• A genomic future for Australian sheep?
• Paranoid plants: conflict in the immune system
• Australia’s wild relatives key to climate adaption
• Fruit and flower yield influenced by ‘shoot branch architecture’.
• Queen bee larvae need more TLC
• Beneficial insects develop insecticide resistance – and that’s not a good thing. 
• Barley loses diversity, wheat doesn’t
• OzWheat reveals which wheat genes to edit
• Improving rice nutrition: zinc, iron, beta carotene
• Are bin chickens spreading Japanese encephalitis?

Read on for more information about each story.

Friday at the Genetics Congress

• Inequity in genomic health for Indigenous Australians
• New guidelines released for achondroplasia, the most common form of disproportionate short stature
• Repatriation of remains and land management: Who owns ancient DNA and its story of deep history?
• The genomics of a liver or heart
• A genetic test to choose the right antidepressant
• “Māu Tēnā Kīwai o te Kete, Māku Tēnei:” Early detection of bowel cancer for Māori population

Genetic health stories from the International Congress of Genetics in Melbourne. Read on for more information about each story.

Thursday at the Genetics Congress

• Are bin chickens spreading Japanese encephalitis? Anjana Karawita from CSIRO says the native ibis could be implicated in the spread.
• Platypus viability threatened by dams, genetic analysis reveals. Luis Mijangos, Bill Sherwin, and colleagues from UNSW show how dams are separating our platypus populations.
• Bilby scats, DNA and Indigenous kids: Carolyn Hogg from University of Sydney has designed a scat-based test to assess the health of endangered bilby populations.
• Victorian koalas are more isolated, according to University of Sydney researchers, as bushfires take their toll.
• What got into your dog? Lucas Huggins has devised a portable test to detect a wide range of parasite infections simultaneously.
• What are the causes and consequences of sex reversal in fish? Unexpected impacts of a warming world.

More on all these stories below.

mRNA ‘quality control’ pioneers Allan Jacobson and Lynne Maquat receive US$500,000 Gruber Genetics Prize in Melbourne

Every plant, every animal, every human depends on mRNA to accurately translate the DNA of their genetic code into proteins, the building blocks of life.

Are bin chickens spreading deadly diseases? Anjana Karawita and his colleagues at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong are investigating the role of Australian ibis in spreading Japanese encephalitis virus

71 per cent of Australians believe that gene testing does not necessarily contribute to effective cancer or disease treatment according to a survey by Lonergan on behalf of gene technology company, Illumina.

^{Photo credit: Avnika Ruparelia}

Life’s tough for African killifish. They only live for three to four months. They suffer from the same diseases of old-aging that we do – cancer, short telomeres, and wasting muscles. But in their old age the muscle wasting slows and may even reverse. Could that happen to people as well? Avnika Ruparelia is unraveling the mysteries of vertebrate aging at Australia’s only killifish research facility.

And more at the International Congress of Genetics

• New gene linked to persistent stuttering, thanks to Michael Hildebrand’s team across 18 institutions. Brain imaging shows that people with this defective gene develop anomalies in brain regions critical for speech.
• Early and personalised interventions into cerebral palsy are possible from broad genomic testing, says Clare van Eyk from Robinson Research Institute.
• Killifish suffer from the same diseases of old-aging that we do – cancer, short telomeres, and wasting muscles. Then the muscle wasting slows and may even reverse. Could that happen to people as well? Avnika Ruparelia unravels the mysteries of vertebrate aging at Australia’s only killifish research facility.
• Faster, kinder, less expensive: using genomic sequencing to diagnose mitochondrial disorders has many benefits says MCRI’s John Christodoulou.
• Cold cases: around 70% of patients with suspected genetic disorders don’t get a diagnosis from their genomic testing. Fiona Lynch from MCRI is exploring if reanalysis years later could solve these cold cases.
• 71 per cent of Australians believe that gene testing does not necessarily contribute to effective cancer or disease treatment, according to a survey released by Illumina. At the same time lives are being transformed, for those in the know.

More on all these stories below.

And more from the International Congress of Genetics in Melbourne

• Catch-22: perils, promises, and profit from Indigenous peoples. Dr Krystal Tsosie, a member of the Navajo Nation, realised that her cancer research was unlikely to help her people. So she founded the Native BioData Consortium – to ensure that Indigenous people benefit from their DNA and data. Her research has been featured in the NYT.
• Capturing the genetic code of every species in the Tree of Life. Mark Blaxter’s UK team have sequenced their first thousand species as part of a bold project to read the genome of every species on Earth. He will report that some animals throw away some of their DNA in their bodies (retaining it in their germlines).
• Reconstructing the lives of some of the 12 million Africans forcibly transported to colonial Americas. Maria Nieves-Colón is piloting the use of tooth DNA to start to discover the history of enslaved workers at a sugar plantation in Peru.
• Prostate cancer: a blood test for circulating tumour DNA could reveal which patients are at higher risk according to Bernard Pope from the University of Melbourne
• Do jumping genes enable mosquitos to adapt to urban environments, asks Spain’s Dr Josefa Gonzalez
• Nobel Laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, African Biogenome Project leader Anne Muigai, Science Executive Editor Valda Vinson on Women in Science – unique journeys to different peaks, with Jen Martin.