The University of Wollongong's world-leading Molecular Horizons building.is still a few months away from being finished.
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But 11 lucky Illawarra Mercury subscribers got a first-hand look yesterday.
When complete, the new molecular life science research facility will encompass a new five storey building with about 7000sqm of ground floor area separated across two wings.
The building will accommodate PC2 laboratories with modular, flexible and efficient ancillary spaces; Cryo-TEM and light microscopy suites; support laboratories; atmospheric chemistry and office accommodation.
UOW's 'game changer' microscope ;[the Titan Krios] in the battle against disease will also be housed in the building, which also provides a clear view to the horizon for atmospheric chemistry researchers to monitor the Earth's atmosphere and air quality more accurately.
It will also be home to researchers' from UOW's Molecular Horizons institute.
Earlier this year these researchers were awarded $1.5 million by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their part in a project to better understand antimicrobial resistance and how superbugs evolve.
The five-year study, a collaboration with researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Southern California, will investigate how bacteria copy and repair their DNA at the level of single cells.
The Molecular Horizons team, headed by Distinguished Professor Antoine van Oijen, leads the world in the development and use of high-power microscopes to study disease-related processes at the single-cell level and even single molecules.
Prof van Oijen yesterday took the time to explain the team's research to the Mercury subscribers.
He said the team's role in the project involves single-molecule visualisation of DNA replication, the process by which bacteria copy their DNA just before they divide, and which bacteria use to repair DNA damaged by external factors such as antibiotic drugs.
"What we are doing [Molecular Horizons] here is putting researchers together from different disciplines, chemists, biologists and physicists to develop powerful microscopes to use as microscopes to study how life works at the cellular and molecular level," Prof van Oijen said.
One of our core research interests is antibiotics and a phenomenon called antibiotic resistance.
- Distinguished Professor Antoine van Oijen
"That is something that we need to do if we want to understand how disease works and of course that is a critical step in developing cures and drugs and therapies.
"One of our core research interests is antibiotics and a phenomenon called antibiotic resistance.
"That's a process that causes bacteria and bacterial infections to become insensitive to antibiotics. This is a pretty scary problem."
"It essentially means that a lot of the seemingly simple bacterial infections that we go to the GP with, might not be treatable anymore," Prof van Oijen said.
"It is happening more and more, and this has to do with how we as a society use antibiotics often appropriately but also often inappropriately.
"It is the inappropriate use of antibiotics that leads to resistance. So there really is a behavioural change that is needed to address that."
He said sensible use of antibiotics was really important to allow the curing of the disease as antibiotics had done for a long time.
"But we also have to make sure we are not using it too much."
Agron Latifi
Wollongong born and bred. I love reporting about the Illawarra region and have been doing it for more than 20 years. I've moved into sport recently after covering the education round for the last five plus years for the Illawarra Mercury. It's been a great pleasure.
Wollongong born and bred. I love reporting about the Illawarra region and have been doing it for more than 20 years. I've moved into sport recently after covering the education round for the last five plus years for the Illawarra Mercury. It's been a great pleasure.
