KAREN allows researchers at the University of Waikato remote control of overseas-based large-scale research equipment.

Finding new ways of fighting Tuberculosis

Associate Professor Vic Arcus of the University of Waikato's Department of Biological Sciences is leading research to find entirely new ways of controlling Tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) is the most deadly of infectious diseases. In New Zealand, TB disproportionately affects lower socio-economic groups and immigrants. Treatment is by courses of antibiotics lasting six months or longer. However, treatment is often difficult as the bacterium that causes TB in humans (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) is able to escape the effects of many antibiotics, which attack growing cells, by lying dormant.

There is evidence linking this ability to lie dormant and the bacterium's resistance to antibiotics to a set of "PIN-domain" proteins found in the bacterium. This project seeks to find  new ways of controlling tuberculosis by understanding the ways these proteins operate and are controlled. One of the tools being used to achieve this is X-ray crystallography.

KAREN brings international research equipment to New Zealand researchers

X-ray crystallography involves firing a beam of X-rays at a sample and studying the way the X-rays are scattered after striking the sample. The catch is that there is no source of such a beam in New Zealand. This problem is now solved with KAREN.

Connections between KAREN and research networks in the United States allow Dr Vic Arcus's team to remotely control a synchrotron operated in California by Stanford University. Soon the team will be able to use the Australian Synchrotron, located in Melbourne for this work.

Australian Synchrotron comes a step closer

With KAREN it is now possible for researchers based in Hamilton and elsewhere able to use this very expensive piece of equipment without leaving the building, saving time and money. Samples will be sent to Melbourne, the synchrotron beamlines will be controlled from a computer in New Zealand and the resulting data returned to New Zealand using KAREN's trans-Tasman link.

The project is funded by the Health Research Council and involves Newcastle University, the University of Otago, the University of Waikato and Waikato Hospital.

[The Australian Synchrotron. Photograph: John O'Neill]

More information

Australian Synchrotron

About X-ray crystallography

KAREN wiki case study: The Toxin-Antitoxin Project

Updated 6 March 2009