News
13th April, 2012
Physiology researcher interviewed by TVNZ
Dr Sam Lucas (Research Fellow) was interviewed with Dr Jim Cotter (Department of Physical Education) for One Network News on Wednesday 4th April 2012.
13th April, 2012
Department welcomes new Senior Lecturer
The Department of Physiology warmly welcomes Dr Rajesh Katare, Senior Lecturer, to our Cardiovascular & Respiratory Physiology research focus group.
9th February, 2012
Physiology staff and students recognised at recent OSMS Awards
The Otago School of Medical Sciences (OSMS) Awards 2011 ceremony was held on 2nd February, and two Department of Physiology staff members featured as winners of major awards.
8th February, 2012
Inaugural Sir John Eccles Lecture
Inaugural Department of Physiology Sir John Eccles Lecture delivered to packed audience.
17th November, 2011
Appreciation Award to Linda McNeill
Congratulations to Linda McNeill, Secretary for the Human Body Systems (HUBS) papers, for being a recipient of a Disability Information and Support Appreciation Award.
13th April, 2012
Dr Sam Lucas (Research Fellow) was interviewed with Dr Jim Cotter (Department of Physical Education) for One Network News on Wednesday 4th April 2012.
Dr Lucas is part of a team of Kiwi scientists heading to the world's highest laboratory on Mount Everest to test what happens to the body at high altitude.
The Everest K2 Centre for National Research is perched in the shadow of the world's highest mountain, at 5000 metres above sea level.
Dr Lucas and Dr Cotter are part of a group of four from the University of Otago who will be conducting tests on themselves while at high altitude.
They will monitor breathing, sleep and brain blood flow at high altitude as well as lung function, as part of studies that look at what causes acute mountain sickness and sleep apnoea (periodic breathing during sleep).
This is their second visit to Everest, and the group will be part of 23 medical researchers from around the world making the seven-day trek to the lab.
(This article originally appeared on the TVNZ website 4 April 2012)
13th April, 2012
The Department of Physiology warmly welcomes Dr Rajesh Katare, Senior Lecturer, to our Cardiovascular & Respiratory Physiology research focus group.
Dr Katare has recently moved to Dunedin from the University of Bristol, UK with his family. His current research focuses on identifying the underlying molecular mechanisms leading to cardiovascular complications in diabetes, development of novel treatment modalities to prevent diabetic cardiomyopathy, demonstration of gender differences in diabetes induced cardiac complications, treatment of ischaemic heart disease with stem cells from the saphenous vein and development of engineered heart tissue from resident cardiac stem cells.
As well as setting up his own research lab, Dr Katare will also provide teaching for the department's undergraduate papers as well as the medical curriculum.
9th February, 2012
The Otago School of Medical Sciences (OSMS) Awards 2011 ceremony was held on 2nd February, and two Department of Physiology staff members featured as winners of major awards.
Professor Brian Hyland was awarded along with his co-authors the prize for the best OSMS paper published in 2011. This paper, Power fluctuations in beta and gamma frequencies in rat globus pallidus: association with specific phases of slow oscillations and differential modulation by dopamine D1 and D2 receptors, by C. Dejean, G. Arbuthnott, JR Wickens, C. Le Moine, T. Boraud and B.I. Hyland, was published in the Journal of Neuroscience 31, 6098-107. The work arose from a project co-funded by the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand and the New Zealand Health Research Council, and involved both inter-departmental ( Dept Anatomy, Prof. Jeff Wickens) and international collaborations (Profs Arbuthnott & Wickens,Okinawa, Japan; Profs Le Moine & Boraud, Bordeaux, France), The reviewers commented that "this manuscript is a very thoughtful contribution to the field's perspective on the role of dopamine in modulation of oscillatory activity in awake animals". The Journal of Neuroscience has an impact factor of 7.3 and is considered the primary location for the best quality full-length articles in the field of neuroscience.
Mr Nairn Smith was awarded the Sustained Research Support Award in recognition of his huge contribution to the success of the Department of Physiology over a period of 46 years. Nairn joined the Department in 1965 and has been an important part of facilitating the research and teaching outputs of initially 13 staff and now of nearly 100 staff and over 40 postgraduate students.
In addition to the major prizes, the OSMS also awarded certificates to staff and students who had received national or international awards for their achievements, and many Physiology staff and students were awarded certificates.
8th February, 2012
Inaugural Department of Physiology Sir John Eccles Lecture delivered to packed audience.
Professor Robert Steiner of the University of Washington, Seattle gave the inaugural Department of Physiology Sir John Eccles Lecture to a packed audience on 30th January 2012. Professor Steiner is a world expert in the field of reproductive neurobiology and gave a fascinating insight into the discovery and role of the neuropeptide kisspeptin in the control of reproduction. Professor Steiner spent three days in the Department of Physiology holding further seminars and numerous valuable discussions with staff, post-doctoral scientists and students.
17th November, 2011
Congratulations to Linda McNeill, Secretary for the Human Body Systems (HUBS) papers, for being a recipient of a Disability Information and Support Appreciation Award.
These Awards recognise staff who offer exceptional support to the Disability Information and Support (DI&S) office and the students that they work with. Linda was nominated and selected as a recipient of the award by DI&S staff. This is the first year that DI&S have introduced the Appreciation Awards.
11th November, 2011
Ten students were selected to present their research on 9th November at the OMSRS meeting, two of which were from the Physiology Department.
Yeri Kim (BBiomedSc (Hons) student supervised by Dr Ruth Empson) and Aye Thaung (BBiomedSc (Hons) student supervised by Dr Regis Lamberts) both gave excellent talks.
Congratulations to Yeri who was awarded 2nd prize at the meeting, which includes a $250 prize. Yeri's talk was entitled "Alpha 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors contribute to cerebellar excitatory synaptic transmission". The alpha 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are expressed at parallel fiber to Purkinje neuron synapse and the activation of these receptors significantly contribute to cerebellar excitatory transmission. These findings have wider implications for how cholinergic inputs influence cerebellar processing.
1st prize was awarded to Mike Fleete in the Department of Anatomy.
27th October, 2011
Congratulations to Associate Professor Fiona McDonald who has received a prestigious Fulbright NZ Senior Scholar Award to study in the United States next year.
Professor McDonald will travel to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas to undertake studies, from January, into the as yet unknown function of a protein named COMMD10. She aims to find out where COMMD10 is usually located in the body's cells and to clarify its normal role.
Professor McDonald said she was "tremendously excited" and "highly appreciative" of the support the Fulbright programme was providing for her research.
Born in Roxburgh, she attended St Hilda's Collegiate School, Dunedin, and gained a BSc (Hons) degree at Otago University and a PhD at Oxford University. She intends to spend most of next year studying in Dallas, and will be accompanied by her husband, Graham Cowles, and their three children.
Fulbright senior awards provide financial support ranging from $US9750 ($NZ12,129) to $US32,500 ($40,430) for study periods of three to five months, as well as return air fares and insurance.
(This article originally appeared in the Otago Daily Times 27 October 2011)
3rd October, 2011
Congratulations to Professor Allan Herbison, Department of Physiology, who has been awarded the University of Otago's highest research honour, the Distinguished Research Medal for his internationally leading research into how the brain controls fertility.
Prof. Herbison is "hugely optimistic" drugs will be available within two or three years to help overcome some of the infertility problems encountered by couples, arising from the brain's control of fertility. About 30% of infertility cases were inked to this brain control mechanism, he said. "There are clinical trials going on all over the world" he added. The new therapies were based partly on some of the fundamental research which had been carried out since 2005 in his laboratory group, and at the University's Centre for Neuroendocrinology. Prof. Herbison founded and directs this centre, which is the largest neuroendocrinology research cluster in the southern hemisphere, and involves nine Otago University laboratories, eight in Dunedin and the other in Christchurch.
His investigations of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons and the molecule kisspeptin, both of which play crucial roles in the brain's master control of ovulation and other aspects of reproduction, have been published in leading international journals such as Neuron and Journal of Neuroscience.
The Invercargill-born medical graduate of Otago returned to the University's Department of Physiology in 2002, after 14 years of study and research in Britain and France, having gained his PhD at Cambridge University in 1991.
He was surprised and delighted with the award, which was "hugely good for morale" and reflected positively on the "outstanding team" of colleagues working with him, through his laboratory and the centre.
(This article originally appeared in the Otago Daily Times 3 October 2011)
Professor Allan Herbison gave his Distinguished Research Medal Lecture on 8th March 2012 which was entitled "A Lucky Kiss in Inner Space: Brain Control of Fertility". At the conclusion of his lecture, Vice-Chancellor Harlene Hayne presented Prof Herbison with the Distinguished Research Medal.
2nd September, 2011
The Department of Physiology had one of its most successful years at Queenstown Research Week, held from 28th August - 2nd September.
Queenstown Research Week 2011 was the biggest science event in New Zealand this year and brought together many large research meetings including the Queenstown Molecular Biology Meeting, the New Zealand Medical Sciences Congress and the Australasian Winter Brain Meetings.
Prizes awarded by the Physiological Society of New Zealand (PSNZ):
25th August, 2011
At the OMSRS meeting on 24th August, four Postdoctoral Fellows/Research Fellows presented their Otago research. Two were from the Department of Physiology - Dr Karl Iremonger and Dr Victoria Scott, who both gave excellent talks.
Congratulations to Dr Karl Iremonger who was chosen as the recipient of the Award, which includes a $1,000 prize. The title of Karl's talk was "An unusual site of action potential initiation in gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons" where he talked about using a combination of single cell electrophysiologial recordings and live cell confocal imaging to demonstrate that the site of action potential initiation is in the dendrite of GnRH neurons. Karl is a member of Professor Allan Herbison's laboratory.
18th August, 2011
Congratulations to Dr István Ábrahám, Dr Rebecca Campbell and Professor Allan Herbison who have all gained HRC project grant funding.
The projects that gained the awards were:
Dr István Ábrahám - "ANGELS as a potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease"
Dr Rebecca Campbell - "Understanding the neuroendocrine abnormalities of polycystic ovarian syndrome"
Professor Allan Herbison - "Understanding kisspeptin neurons"
Use the following links to learn more about the research being undertaken in the labs of Dr Ábrahám, Dr Campbell and Professor Herbison.
29th July, 2011
Congratulations to Kajsa Igelstrom, PhD student supervised by Dr Phil Heyward.
Kajsa recently completed the examinations aspects of her PhD thesis, and her thesis has been placed on the Division of Health Sciences List of Exceptional PhD Theses. Kajsa's thesis is the second thesis from the Department this year to be placed on this list (Carissa Murrell's thesis was also placed on the list in May).
A thesis is of exceptional quality when all three examiners of a candidate's thesis agree that the thesis is of an exceptional standard in every respect (research content, originality, quality of expression and accuracy of presentation) and is amongst the top 10% of theses examined, so is an excellent achievement.
Kajsa's thesis is entitled "Anticonvulsant actions of antidepressants in a novel model of acute seizures in vitro" and will be available online through the University library website in the coming weeks. Kajsa discovered and characterised a new brain slice model of epileptic seizures, and used this model to study antiepileptic actions of the "happy pill" Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. She found that these antidepressants blocked epileptic activity in brain slices, and showed that this effect was unrelated to its main serotonergic targets. Instead, they appeared to exert this action via inhibition of voltage-gated sodium channels, a mechanism shared by many antiepileptic drugs.
22nd July, 2011
Congratulations to Professor Allan Herbison, winner of the Physiological Society of NZ 2011 Triennial Medal.
This medal is awarded in recognition of distinguished physiological research for the previous five years by a member of the PSNZ.
Over the last 5 years, Prof. Herbison and his team within the Department of Physiology and Centre for Neuroendocrinology at the University of Otago have shown that kisspeptin, a newly discovered signalling molecule, is the key to starting puberty and allowing ovulation to occur.
Kisspeptin was first discovered in 1996 by cancer researchers who named it after their hometown chocolate factory the Hershey Kiss. However, it wasnt until 2003 that kisspeptin was recognised to be important for the control of reproduction in humans. At that time, two large international studies found that humans with mutations in the kisspeptin receptor Gpr54 were unable to go though puberty and were infertile.
Prof. Herbison's team has subsequently discovered how and why kisspeptin is so important. It turns out that kisspeptin is a signaling molecule made in the brain where it activates the gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons, the nerve cells directly responsible for altering hormone levels in the blood, to bring about puberty and ovulation.
Professor Allan Herbison, who is leading the HRC-funded study, said: "This is an exciting finding, as people have been trying to find out precisely how the brain controls puberty and ovulation for more than 30 years. This work now reveals a crucial link in the brain circuitry responsible."
The studies undertaken indicate that disorders affecting the signalling between kisspeptin and GnRH neurons will result in children going through puberty too early or too late and in women being unable to ovulate.
"Targeting drugs to this chemical switch to make it work properly may help some people who are infertile, while finding compounds that can block this switch could lead to new contraceptives," said Professor Herbison.
It could allow for ovulation to be induced in a more natural way than current therapies available to infertile women. "By targeting this switch, the subsequent processes could proceed normally, avoiding the need to induce ovulation by injection of large doses of the hormones themselves."
Infertility is an increasing problem for couples in western societies. More than 10 per cent of couple in New Zealand suffering from infertility and the research team is looking at new avenues of treatment.
"Our findings show that kisspeptin may be a promising area to focus future research efforts aimed at either enhancing or regulating human fertility," he said.
24th June, 2011
Dr Pete Jones (Lecturer) is one of only seven researchers chosen to represent Otago to highlight Otago research to Parliament in June.
He was selected from 30 speakers who presented at the O-Zone Group Symposium "For the Public Good" on 5th May with his talk "RyR2: the gateway to arrhythmia". The public event was deisgned to showcase the research of new and emerging researchers, and the standard of presentations was very high. Congratulations also to other staff who represented the Department and gave excellent talks (Dr Zoe Ashley, Dr Jenny Clarkson, Dr Andrea Kwakowsky, Dr Regis Lamberts and Dr Sam Lucas).
20th June, 2011
The Department would like to congratulate Aleisha Moore and Aye Thaung (BBiomedSc Hons students supervised by Rebecca Campbell and Regis Lamberts respectively) who have both been awarded the Dean's Prize for the Best Summer Project Report.
Aleisha's project was entitled "Investigating steroid hormone receptor expression in a mouse model of polycystic ovarian syndrome" and Aye's project was entitled "Is the obese mammalian competent of a fight/flight response? The adrenergic signal transduction pathway in obesity".
The Dean's Advisory Committee only made two awards for the best summer research projects and a further three Highly Commended awards, so Aleisha and Aye have done extremely well by receiving the top prize.
The awards will be presented to Aleisha and Aye at the OSMS Awards Ceremony in January next year.
13th June, 2011
Prostate Cancer Foundation chief executive Keith Beck presented a $104,000 research grant to Dr Andrew Bahn of the Department of Physiology.
The grant is to fund a two-year project examining the effects of chemotherapy drugs in the transport proteins in prostate tumours. The grant was announced to coincide with the start of Men's Health Week.
26th May, 2011
Congratulations to Carissa Murrell, PhD student co-supervised by Dr Phil Ainslie (Department of Physiology) and Dr Jim Cotter (School of Physical Education).
Carissa recently completed the examination aspects of her PhD thesis, and her thesis has been placed on the Division of Health Sciences List of Exceptional PhD Theses, a very prestigious accolade. A thesis is of exceptional quality when all three examiners of a candidate's thesis agree that the thesis is of an exceptional standard in every respect (research content, originality, quality of expression and accuracy of presentation) and is amongst the top 10% of theses examined, and we are very proud of Carissa's success. Well done!
Carissa's thesis is entitled Effects of Age, Fitness, and Exercise on the Control of Cerebral Blood Flow. Her research focused on the effects of age, fitness, and exercise on the control of blood flow to the brain. A compromised control of cerebral blood flow can result in syncope (fainting) and is a risk factor for cerebrovascular disease (e.g., stroke). Two major controllers of cerebral blood flow are blood pressure and blood carbon dioxide. Furthermore, age, fitness, and exercise all affect cerebral blood flow and its control. In her first study, Carissa assessed the control of cerebral blood flow in response to acute changes in blood pressure (due to a change in posture) in young and older trained and untrained individuals at rest and following exercise. In her second study, Carissa assessed the effect of 12 weeks of exercise training on the control of cerebral blood flow in response to changes in carbon dioxide at rest and during exercise in young and older individuals.
Carissa's thesis will be available online through the University library website in the coming weeks.
The Physiology Department's staff are so approachable and genuinely happy to help. Having lecturers be so positive and excited about their work makes study so much easier!
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