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2017 Laureate Profile: Professor Geoffrey McFadden

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Professor Geoffrey McFadden

Professor Geoffrey McFadden headshot at a function

Administering Organisation:  The University of Melbourne
Discipline Area: Biological Sciences and Biotechnology

Fellowship project summary

Genes, reproduction and inheritance in a microbe (FL170100008)

The project aims to particularly explore sexual gene inheritance in Plasmodium, a representative of a large group of human and animal parasites. Plasmodium must have a sexual exchange of genes in the mosquito for the transfer of disease to a new host. This project will investigate the fate and behaviour of Plasmodium genes during reproduction; the differing chromosome states resulting from sexual genetic processes and the asymmetrical inheritance of some Plasmodium genes. The project is expected to advance Australia’s ability to understand the reproduction and survival of these parasites in their mosquito vector and develop cutting-edge genetic tools that will advance the microbial genetics discipline globally. This may ultimately lead to biotechnology and biomedical outcomes.

Australian Research Council funding: $3,248,822

About Professor McFadden

Professor Geoffrey McFadden is a Professor at the School of BioSciences at The University of Melbourne. He has made significant progress in malaria research, having identified and characterised the apicoplast (a relic chloroplast) of malaria and Toxoplasma, and discovered how it can be targeted with antimalarial drugs. In 1987, he was awarded a prestigious ARC QEII Fellowship to work at The University of Melbourne’s Plant Cell Biology Research Centre. Professor McFadden was awarded an ARC Federation Fellowship in 2006 to undertake research on malaria parasites. Professor McFadden is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences since 2005 and the American Academy of Microbiology. His awards include the Ramaciotti Medal, the Australian Academy of Science’s Frederick White Prize and two Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholar’s awards.

Find out more about Professor McFadden and his research by visiting his profile page.

For further information about this funding scheme, please visit the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme page on the ARC website.

 

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