Seedcorn

The Seedcorn Programme develops new areas of scientific research through inward investment.

Seedcorn is unique amongst the science programmes run at VLA as it is aimed at inward investment and is directed by the needs of the Agency rather than our customers. Projects are submitted annually from across VLA and the Academic Board selects those for funding based primarily on ‘scientific development’, ‘scientific excellence’ and ‘fit to VLA strategy’.

Some examples of recent Seedcorn investment in key growth areas:

Deepening our mathematical, statistical and epidemiological skills bases

• Sandy Miller has been developing a network approach to understanding infectious disease spreads in the UK pig industry. This project exploits existing data sources to describe the industry in terms of movement networks, considering temporal, geographical, farm type and company variations and their role in infectious disease dynamics.
• Nick Coldham is mentoring a PhD student with Professor Alex Gammerman, Director of Computer Learning at Royal Holloway University of London, on the application of machine learning algorithms for the analysis of complex veterinary data. One example is the analysis of the serum proteome from affected and unaffected animals.
• Ross MacDonald has been developing real time mapping using open-source software over the web (eg. ‘mashing’ with Google MapsTM) to display the locations of AI surveillance records from Danish and Swedish web pages, as well as records extracted from VLA’s Farmfile and the warden patrol scheme.

Developing investments in mass analysis tools and their application

• The TB team have identified proteins, comprising bovine tubercle granulomas and are currently testing these as potential serum biomarkers.
• Malcolm Banks has used a proteomic approach to identify serum biomarkers in full PMWS in pigs.
• Maurice Sauer has focused on the detection of PrPSc in blood plasma by time resolved immunofluorometric assay; a potential live animal test for TSEs.
• Jean-Pierre Grossard is investigating the cellular tropism of bovine immunodeficiency virus.
• Luke Randall has developed matrix assisted laser desorption ionisation - time of flight (MALDI-ToF) systems to differentiate PCR products, encoding different members of extended beta lactamase resistance gene family.

Cellular pathology and imaging

• Ginny Saunders is investigating the internal ribosomal entry site (IRES)-regulated control of PrP protein expression using tissue culture and confocal microscopy to better understand how the prion protein responds to cellular stress.
• Roberto La Ragione is developing Lux technology in collaboration with Professor Colin Hills’ group (University College Cork) to study real-time tissue tropism of E.coli O157 in a surrogate mouse model. E.coli O157 preferentially colonises the large intestine in the mouse, similar to ruminant reservoir hosts, and could therefore be a useful surrogate model.