Strengthening Australia’s livestock industry

This project aims to develop and validate fast, cost effective platform technologies for detection and surveillance of insect transmitted viruses in northern Australian livestock.

“Arboviruses” are a huge problem for the livestock industry as they are easily spread and can wipe out large numbers of livestock to potentially devastate local economies.

Our platform technologies will aid in identifying undiagnosed and emerging diseases in livestock, especially beef cattle.

Tackling disease with a three way approach

• Increased knowledge
• Early identification
• Diagnosis of undiagnosed arboviral diseases

Project Methodology

To carry out this project, the Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries (QPI&F) wished to develop an oligonucleotide microarray for the detection of known and new arbovirus in cattle. They engaged with QFAB to design the probes and provide an identification method based on probe intensity pattern.

To perform the probe design, all known arbovirus genomes needed to be collected and classified according to the Family, Genus and Species. The SRS Databases werre used for such tasks. The information coverage of each genome was then determined. Particular care was required when a species was over or under represented. A workflow of web services was built to create potential probes for each genome. Finally, hybridisation energies were determined to establish signature profile for each Family, Genus and Species.