April 28, 2025
I am Bernadine Kasian a Malaria Research Scientific Officer at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research. I have expertise in molecular biology and exploring further into genetics.
I travelled to Australia from February 8th 2025 to April 20th 2025, to undergo training in using the Nanopore Minion Sequencing Technology at Professor Alyssa Barry’s Lab, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria. I used the Minion sequencing platform to screen for antimalarial drug resistance markers in Plasmodium falciparum isolates detected during pregnancy and at birth in women who enrolled into the SAPOT trial (NCT05426434). During my stay, I consolidated my expertise in conventional Polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) techniques to amplify regions of P. falciparum genes associated with antimalarial resistance and learned about sequencing pre-processing procedures and final DNA sequencing of the target amplicons. I also learned about processing of the sequencing data and data analysis. I plan to present my results at the 2025 PNG Medical Symposium and at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
I would like to acknowledge the following collaborators for making my trip and learning successful;
- Dr Zahra Razook (experienced Molecular Biologist working as a RA in Alyssa Barry’s team at Deakin University) for mentoring and guiding me in learning all the assays and techniques for the minion sequencing platform.
- Dr Kirsty McCann (Research Fellow in Genomic Epidemiology at Deakin University) for mentoring me in the sequencing data downstream processing and analysis.
- Professor Barry (Professor of Systems Epidemiology of Infection with Deakin University’s Institute for Physical and Mental Health and Clinical Translation (IMPACT) and Head of the Translational Genomics Working Group, Burnet) for the opportunity to learn and do all these work in her laboratory and for her guidance and support as my project supervisor.
- A/Prof Holger W Hunger (Staff specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal Darwin Hospital and Senior Research Fellow at Menzies School of Health Research) for his continuous support and mentorship in my work as my project supervisor.
- Professor Stephen J Rogerson (Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne and Head of the Malaria Pathogenesis and Immunity Laboratory at the Doherty Institute) for his support and mentorship in my work my project supervisor.
