THE ANIMAL VIROLOGY GROUP
The TEAM
| Graham Wilcox BVSc (Qld), PhD (Qld), Diplomate
ACVM
Group leader; has been at Murdoch since 1976, except for a 4 year leave
of absence while investigating Jembrana disease in Indonesia. Other
experience has included periods in the USA (Kansas State University and
Texas A & M University) and Nigeria (Ahmadu Bello University working
with a USAID team).
Graham is an animal virologist, utilises molecular virological techniques
to investigate solutions to virus disease problems in production animals. |
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Moira Desport BTEC Higher National Certificate in Appl Biol
(Reading College of Tech), PhD (U Lond)
Moira joined the Animal Virology group in 2001 when she first migrated to Australia, having completed her PhD in the Pathology Department of the Royal Veterinary College, investigating the tropism and viral variation of bovine viral diarrhoea virus in cattle. Her studies led to an interest in viral tropism and pathogenesis and these are areas that the Jembrana disease virus (JDV) research group is now investigating. Moira has been part of the team that has developed a recombinant protein vaccine to help control the spread of Jembrana disease which is currently in safety trials in Bali cattle in Indonesia. The JDV research team is also involved with the development of recombinant protein assays to diagnose and differentiate between infections with JDV and a second bovine lentivirus, bovine immunodeficiency virus. We are currently investigating the relationship between these two viral infections in Bali cattle in a superinfection study. |
Andrew Hughes
Andrew has a mixed practice and production managerial background. He graduated from Murdoch University with a BSc and BVMS is now doing a PhD on the role of porcine circovirus type1 in Australia and its association with Congenital tremors and the Australian pig herd. |
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Shane Peterson
Shane graduated in Biotechnology at Murdoch with first class honours in Bioinformatics. He then worked at the Australian National University, Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging, and ACT pathology. Shane is interested in virology, sexual health and tissue engineering. His PhD research is on the genome evolution of Jembrana Disease Virus of Indonesia, a HIV like virus of cattle. Shane's research is supervised by Professor Graham Wilcox and is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). |
Judhi Rachmat Judhi
is from the R & D Centre for Biotechnology (LIPI Biotechnology) who
obtained his initial science degree from the Faculty of Mathematics and
Natural Science, University of Pakuan, Bogor Indonesia, in Chemistry,
and subsequently was awarded a Diplome d’Etudes Universitaires de Technologie
from the Universite de Technologie de Compiegne, France in 1991.
He was successful in an application for a John Allwright Fellowship from
ACIAR and commenced his PhD program at Murdoch University in 2002.
Judhi is investigating the use of monoclonals in the characterisation
of the native glycosylated proteins of Jembrana disease virus, and eventually
hopes to produce recombinant monoclonal antibody. Judhi’s training
in fermentation technology will help him develop methods for the medium
scale production of recombinant virus proteins for vaccines and serological
tests. |
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I Wayan Masa Tenaya
Masa was born in Gianyar Bali in 1962 and completed his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree at Airlangga University Surabaya in 1987. He was accepted as a government officer in 1989 at the Disease Investigation Centre (DIC) for animal diseases in Denpasar, Bali where I worked on the Jembrana disease (JD) project. He first came to Australian in 1995-1997 to do his masters degree (M.Phil) at Murdoch University in the field of Microbiology with Prof. J. Penhale and Prof. D. Hampson. In 1997 he returned to the original office in Denpasar as a senior researcher to continue his work on JD project to develop molecular diagnostic tools, serological and molecular surveys and provide conventional JD vaccines that are used to combat JD where JD is endemic. Masa returned to Murdoch University in November, 1996 to undertake a Doctor of Philosophy program on the cellular pathogenegis of Jembrana disease virus (JDV) with Prof. Graham Wilcox, Dr Moira Desport and Dr Sandy McLachlan. |
Tegan McNab BSc (Hons)
Tegan is a Biomedical Science and Molecular Biology graduate from Murdoch University and is currently undertaking her PhD working on the Jembrana disease virus project. She is characterising the immune responses to Bovine immunodeficiency virus infection in Bali cattle and is also studying the effects of superinfection with JDV and BIV.
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Andrea Ducki
Andrea joined the Animal virology group in 2007. She graduated with a PhD from the microbiology dept. of University of Goettingen in Germany in protein chemistry, pharmacology and molecular biology. Her research has included the use of techniques such as electron microscopy, gold-histo tagged immunology, protein chemistry and molecular biology. Andrea has some teaching responsibilites (animal welfare/ethics, microbiology) as well as duties for the day-to-day running of the virology group laboratories, including cell cultures, maintaining the cell bank register and she is currently involved in PCV research. |
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