Molecular Biology Research Group

The Research Group for Molecular Biology (RGMB) is a platform for multidisciplinary research utilising molecular biology to study areas of importance to human health, the environment, agriculture and industry. Our goals are to develop and maintain high quality, externally funded research projects, train postgraduate students in sound science using modern techniques and strengthen undergraduate teaching in molecular biology. The group has associated members from a range of academic areas within UNE and from other institutes in Australia and overseas. Our researchers and associates have expertise in Microbiology, Biochemistry, Biomedical Sciences, Genetics and Microbial Ecology.   Current projects range from bone biology and homeostasis to hormone production in plants, fungal pathogenicity or antibiotic production, crop health, soil microbiology and diseases of aquatic organisms. Plant science projects include hormone metabolism and its relationship to grain-fill in cereals during water and temperature stress. Microbiology projects include the investigation of important regulators in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus, the study of virulence factors of the black root rot fungal pathogen Thielaviopsis basicola, the development of microbial solutions to disease using biocontrol and biofertilisers in crop production as well as the application of probiotics in aquaculture. Since its establishment in 2003 the group has been running several projects externally funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) as well as organisations such as the Cotton Cooperative Research Centre (CCC-CRC), Cotton Research and Development Cooperation (CRDC) and Australian Wool Innovation.

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