Research into sheep chlamydia funded
A UNIVERSITY of the Sunshine Coast molecular microbiologist known for his work in preventing chlamydial infections in koalas has won a prestigious national research grant to examine the bacterium in sheep.
Associate Professor Adam Polkinghorne received $293,000 in the latest round of the Australian Research Council Linkage Projects scheme, announced by the Federal Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham.
Together with industry partner funding, it is a $593,000 project.
Dr Polkinghorne, who is director of USC’s Centre for Animal Health Innovation, will be chief investigator on an industry-collaborative project to develop new tools for the detection of chlamydial infections in sheep.
“These bacterial infections in sheep can result in significant on-farm losses for Australian producers and
threaten the security of our billion-dollar live export industry, but current detection tools are outdated, unreliable and difficult to interpret,” he said.
“This USC-led project aims to use significant advances in genomic data to develop new
and effective blood tests to detect the key bacterial pathogens involved in infection.
“The tools and information generated by our project may be adopted by vets, farmers, industry and government to support domestic graziers and our live export industry.
“We hope the project will find that most Australian animals are in fact free of this disease and are of the high quality that Australian producers pride themselves on.”
Dr Polkinghorne said the pathogens could cause serious and fatal health issues in sheep, such as pneumonia, arthritis and abortion, although these pathogens did not impact on human health.
“My previous research has made good progress in improving the clinical recognition of chlamydial infections in Australian livestock, but we need more effective diagnostic testing methods,” he said.
Researchers involved in this study will include Dr Willa Huston at the University of Technology Sydney and Dr Scott Carver at the University of Tasmania, with the close collaboration of industry partners.