Find out about our latest news and events.

News

Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) ectodomain bound to double-stranded RNA. Photo: petarg/stock.adobe.com
Friday, 27 Feb 2026

Extremely short, or tiny, fragments of RNA – working copies of our genetic code – play a critical role in keeping the immune system in check, preventing inflammation and the onset of autoimmune disease, according to an international team of researchers led by scientists from The Hudson Institute of Medical Research in collaboration with The Australian National University (ANU).

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Thursday, 16 May 2024

The discovery of a new critical enzyme could help engineer climate resilient crops capable of sucking far more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a much more efficient way.

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Wednesday, 16 Aug 2023

Professor Alexander Maier wants us to change our mind about parasites.

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Sacha Pulsford
Monday, 09 May 2022

Meet the PhD researcher exploring how bacterial proteins could hold the key to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

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Friday, 06 May 2022

Researchers have discovered why malaria parasites are vulnerable to some drug therapies but resistant to others, offering scientists another piece of the puzzle in the global fight against the disease.

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Tuesday, 28 Sep 2021

A low-cost, non-toxic cancer treatment has been developed by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU). The treatment uses dead bacteria to help kick-start the immune system and shrink cancer.

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Events

Caroline Puente-Lelievre
23 Apr 2026 | 1 - 2pm

In this talk, I will show how combining phylogenetic inference, protein structure prediction, and ancestral sequence reconstruction opens new ways to investigate how protein functions originate and diversify across the tree of life.

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Dr Matthew Johnson
2 Apr 2026 | 3 - 4pm

Just as the development of the first light microscopes uncovered a new microbial frontier, the use of high-throughput sequencing and metagenomics has uncovered a new frontier of unculturable microorganisms, often referred to as “microbial dark matter”.

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Matthew Doyle
26 Mar 2026 | 1 - 2pm

Matthew's laboratory focuses on the incredibly multifunctional Omp85 protein superfamily which conduct essential processes in the outer membranes of all Gram-negative bacteria such as protein folding, insertion, and translocation reactions, as well as lipid transport reactions.

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Ciara Wallis
16 Feb 2026 | 1 - 2pm

Throughout my PhD, I determined the transport mechanisms of two proteins that we show break the standard channel / transporter definitions and instead function as anion “chansporters” - proteins that exist somewhere on the spectrum between transporters and channels.

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Renhong Yan
13 Feb 2026 | 12 - 1pm

Heteromeric amino acid transporters (HATs) play essential roles in the transport of amino acids, thyroid hormones, and various amino acid–like drugs. Mutations in HATs are associated with several inherited disorders, including cystinuria, lysinuric protein intolerance, and autism spectrum disorders.

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Amina Mustafa
14 Jan 2026 | 1 - 2pm

Autotransporters (ATs) are virulence factors found in Gram-negative bacteria that consist of three domains: an N-terminal signal peptide, a central passenger domain, and a C-terminal β-barrel domain. Here, we used RpeA from rabbit enteropathogenic Escherichia coli as a model AT.

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