Prestigious fellowship for Massey biochemist

Bringing biochemical rigour to questions in evolutionary biology, which can have implications for medical issues such as antibiotic resistance, has earned a Massey University scientist a prestigious Rutherford Discovery Fellowship.

Dr Wayne Patrick is one of ten early-to-mid-career researchers around the country who received the awards, worth up to $200,000 annually for the next five years.

Dr Patrick, a senior lecturer at Massey’s Albany campus, says he is convinced that biochemical insights will be critical for solving hard, fundamental problems in evolutionary biology, as well as important applied ones such as the emergence of antibiotic resistance in pathogens.

His award – $1 million over five years – will enable him to further his research on the role of “promiscuous proteins”, particularly in relation to their impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics.

“Protein molecules called enzymes are responsible for accelerating the thousands of biochemical reactions that happen inside cells,” he says. “The current textbook view is that these enzymes are highly specific, being able to do one thing and one thing only. However, this implies that enzymes are unlikely ever to evolve new functions. This appears to be at odds with the reality of evolution: new enzymes can evolve rapidly, as demonstrated by the emergence of microbes that degrade antibiotics and human-made pollutants,” he says.

His proposed programme of research will provide a coherent understanding and further explore the evolutionary origins of enzyme functions and structures and will shed new light on longstanding questions in protein and genome evolution.
Dr Patrick is based at the Institute of Natural Sciences. He completed his BSc (Hons) degree at the University of Otago, before being awarded the Prince of Wales Scholarship to undertake his PhD at the University of Cambridge (UK). After four years as a post-doctoral fellow at Emory University (USA), he returned home to New Zealand in 2007.

Since then, he and his team of students have initiated a diverse research programme, focussing on questions at the intersection of biochemistry and evolutionary biology. They also use their fundamental understanding to engineer new biomolecules that are useful in research, diagnostics and personalized medicine.
He was named NZBio Young Biotechnologist of the Year 2010, and he has previously been successful in winning two grants from the highly competitive Marsden Fund.

The Rutherford Discovery Fellowships provide funding towards both the Fellow’s salary, and their programme of work. The scheme was set up by the Government last year, and this is the second year that the fellowships have been awarded.
The chairperson of the selection panel, Professor Margaret Brimble, said the high calibre of the applicants made choosing the final ten people a very difficult decision. “Those chosen demonstrated exceptional talent and promise. We believe they will be New Zealand’s future research leaders and are worthy of this investment.”