Infrastructure to enhance biodiscovery research, curation and access

Natural products have significant potential for societal and economic impacts in health, medicine, food additives and agrochemicals. The Australian Biodiscovery Network is a collaborative initiative to boost biodiscovery research and infrastructure, accelerating innovation in Queensland and Australia.

The foundation members of the network, funded by an ARC LIEF grant in 2023,  comprise four Queensland universities: Griffith University, University of Queensland, James Cook University and University of the Sunshine Coast. Foundation partners will leverage their existing infrastructure and capabilities in:

  • Generation, curation and access to biodiscovery resources from plants, fungi, marine organisms, microorganisms and pathogens.
  • Robotic sample processing, storage capabilities, parallel protein purification and live-cell analysis systems, among other technologies.
  • Research capacity building through training researchers in biodiscovery.

Griffith University

Waters ZQTM Mass Detector

The Waters ZQTM Mass Detector is a parallel automated liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) system located within the NatureBank facility, providing increased speed and scale of biomolecule generation from plants, fungi, parasites and marine organisms.

For additional information and access please contact r.davis@griffith.edu.au

Hamilton Storage Verso Q75

The Hamilton Storage Verso Q75 within the Compounds Australia facility will enable -20oC storage of biomolecules from partners, as well as researchers around Australia.

For additional information and access please contact compounds-australia@griffith.edu.au

University of Queensland

QPix® Microbial Colony Picker

The QPix® Microbial Colony Picker is a customised one-of-a-kind robotic system, automating the isolation and cultivation of microbial colonies. It can rapidly and accurately pick individual colonies from culture plates enhancing the efficiency and throughput in microbial isolation and cultivation, accelerating sample processing for analysis.

James Cook University

AKTA Pure 25M1

The AKTA Pure 25M1 protein purification system will accelerate biodiscovery and development of novel molecules sourced from the Queensland’s diverse tropical biodiversity.

For additional information and access please contact aithm@jcu.edu.au

University of the Sunshine Coast

Incucyte live-cell imager

The Incucyte live-cell imager enables researchers to analyse and study living cells in real-time, efficiently capture cellular changes as they occur.

For additional information and access please contact Research and Advanced Instrumentation Technical officer, Amanda Norton: anorton@usc.edu.au