Science at the Shine Dome 2010

New Fellows Seminar

Wednesday 5 May

Dr John Oakeshott FAA
CSIRO Entomology, Canberra

John Oakeshott graduated from Adelaide University with a PhD in genetics in 1978. He then took up a research fellowship at the Australian National University, before moving to CSIRO Entomology in 1987, where he is now chief scientist. He is an evolutionary biologist whose multidisciplinary studies on latitudinal clines in Drosophila enzyme polymorphisms, the molecular basis of insecticide resistance in blowflies and the degradation of persistent organic pollutants by bacteria have provided important new insights into the molecular basis of adaptation. He has published nearly 150 papers in international refereed journals, for over 3700 citations and an H factor of 34. John has also applied his science to the broader benefit of society, in particular through sustained service to the regulation of Australia’s gene technology and the international commercialisation of a novel enzyme-based pesticide bioremediation technology. He is also a Fellow of CSIRO and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

Evolution of new (enzyme) functions

I will explore how qualitatively new biochemical functions evolve. Using as a model the evolution of the ability to detoxify chemical insecticides, I will show that bacteria can rapidly develop efficient new enzymes whereas insects have struggled to develop much less effective new catalysts. This is because of the constraints that eukaryote genetic systems impose on the remodelling of an enzyme if more than one mutation is required to achieve a useful new phenotype. Under some circumstances this constraint could clearly limit the ability of eukaryotes to adapt to rapid environmental change.

I will also show that the tools of synthetic biology can now be used in artificial laboratory evolution experiments to produce even more efficient enzymes than bacteria have managed in nature. Such enzymes are increasingly being used to drive otherwise difficult reactions for industry, in this case in the bioremediation of insecticide residues in the environment.