Researcher Paul Stothard is part of a team tackling chronic wasting disease in elk (above, a healthy animal in Jasper) and other cervids, such as deer, moose and caribou.
Researchers in the Faculty of ALES are applying the power of genomics as they hunt down solutions to three quite different problems posing dangers to the environment.
In recently announced studies, separate research groups are aiming to discover how to grow trees that resist pests and tolerate drought; how to make oil pipelines safe from rupture; and how to eliminate chronic wasting disease in deer, elk, moose and caribou.
For each project, the magic bullet may lie in the wealth of information provided by genomics-the study of the genes in an organism and how they interact.
For forest researchers Barb Thomas and Nadir Erbilgin, of the Department of Renewable Resources, studying the genotypes (heritable genetic variants) and chemotypes (chemically distinct genotypes) of selected parent trees and progeny in white spruce and lodgepole pine will generate far more insight than merely measuring physical characteristics, such as height and volume, in predicting the performance of our future forests.
"Knowing how the genotypes vary relative to their phenotypes (physical characteristics) in individuals, can help identify very early on which trees are better adapted to drought, which show insect resistance, which exhibit desirable wood quality traits, and which have identifiable metabolomic and chemical responses," said Thomas.
She and Erbilgin, along with other team members, will then use that information to predict which parent trees should be used to produce the next generation of seedlings for reforestation.
"By being able to directly link phenotypic performance with genotyping, we can continue to learn more about the capacity of our native trees to adapt to climate change," said Thomas.
The power of integrating genomics with phenomics will allow for much earlier, accurate predictions of performance and speed up the selection time for the next generation of trees from 30 years to an estimated 10 years, she says.
In a component of work attached to this study, sociologist Debra Davidson, of the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, will assess lessons learned in other jurisdictions that have applied this genomics-assisted species migration technology.
"We'll also assess the state of expert knowledge and uncertainty on the technology, the likely sources of support and opposition for it in the political sphere and the development of best practices in science-policy communication," said Davidson.
Her colleague Henry An, an agricultural economist working in the same department, will generate estimates of the economic value of these improved tree varieties-under various market, climate change and pest infestation scenarios-in order to help guide policy and investment decisions in the forest sector.
Meanwhile, in a second major project, bioresource researcher John Wolodko, the Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures Strategic Chair in Bio and Industrial Metals in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, is co-leading a study to predict and prevent microbial influenced corrosion.
MIC, as it's known, is the activity of bacteria and other microbes in water and soil that makes metal more corrosive. Wolodko's team will use genomics to understand how the thousands of different microbial populations are interacting with one another.
Starting this month, they'll take samples from a wide range of environments, including offshore platforms, upstream pipelines and transmission pipelines. Feeding the data about different chemistries, temperatures and other physical characteristics into a database, the researchers will look for trends.
Corrosion of steel infrastructure is estimated to cost the oil and gas industry in the range of $3 billion to $7 billion each year in maintenance, repairs and replacement. Microbiologically influenced corrosion is responsible for at least 20 per cent of that cost.
In a the third major project, molecular biologist Paul Stothard and agricultural economist Ellen Goddard are part of a team tackling chronic wasting disease (CWD) in cervids (the collective name for deer, elk, moose and caribou). Stothard hopes that genomics will reveal gene expression changes associated with the onset of this disease, which is caused by infectious prion proteins that can cause normal proteins to transform into malformed prions, which fatally attack the brains of infected animals.
Knowing which genes are activated or inhibited by CWD infection will be an important step towards the development of better diagnostic tests for identifying infected cervids and managing the disease, said Stothard.
Stothard and Goddard are working with UAlberta's Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, the Faculty of Science, and the University of Calgary's Faculty of Veterinary Science.
Thomas and Erbilgin are teaming up with the University of British Columbia; Wolodko's project is in conjunction with researchers from the University of Calgary, Memorial University and Dalhousie University.
All three projects are part of a Large-Scale Applied Research Program of Genome Canada, announced in mid-December. Genome Canada supplied about a third of the large-scale funding, with additional support from Genome Alberta, Genome B.C., Genome Atlantic, Alberta Innovates, InnoTech Alberta and an international collaboration of government and industry partners.