Supporting Research Amidst a Conflict: AGRF’s Collaboration with Ukrainian Researcher Dr Iryna Kozeretska

AGRF proudly supports humanitarian programs and is honoured to assist Deputy Director Iryna Kozeretska of the National Antarctic Scientific Centre of Ukraine, who were awarded a grant from the Australian Academy of Science Ukraine-Australia Research Fund. This initiative of the Australian Academy of Science, thanks to funding from the not-for-profit Breakthrough Prize Foundation, is designed to enable Ukrainian researchers to continue their valuable research, under challenging circumstances. The funds support access to leading infrastructure capabilities in Australia, including Australian National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) facilities. As an NCRIS supported facility under Bioplatforms Australia, AGRF is eager to contribute to this support by providing access to our genomics services.

Dr Iryna Kozeretska’s research project aims to understand how freshwater organisms adapt to climate change, utilising the Antarctic fairy shrimp and the copepod crustacean as model organisms for studying these adaptations. Interestingly, the genomes for both the Antarctic fairy shrimp and the copepod remain unknown. Therefore, it is critical to sequence their genomes as an important first step for future research to enable insights into how specific genes may facilitate climate change adaptations.

This research aligns well with AGRF’s vision to make the world a better and more sustainable place, especially on the conservation and biodiversity management front. The impacts of climate change are increasingly prominent, emphasising the need for concerted efforts to mitigate its effects and understand how our natural ecosystems adapt to these changes. Dr Kozeretska’s research project is both timely and significantly.

In our commitment to supporting this valuable research, AGRF will provide extra genomics services at no cost, complementing the genomics services awarded to Dr Kozeretska by the Australian Academy of Science. This will empower Dr Kozeretska to maximise the funding from the Australian Academy of Science generating more data for her research. Excitingly, our collaboration will leverage two of AGRF’s latest genomics sequencing technologies—the PacBio Revio Long-Read sequencing platform, and Illumina’s NovaSeq X Plus Next Generation Sequencing technology.

This truly collaborative project brings together Dr Kozeretska’s Antarctic expertise, funding from the Australian Academy of Science, NCRIS and Bioplatforms Australia, and AGRF’s genomics expertise, giving access to cutting-edge technologies that will have a positive impact on advancing scientific knowledge in the face of climate change. We can’t wait to get started!