Dr Mark Temple

• Qualifications
  
• Biography
  
• Research
  
• Selected Publications
  
• Grants/Projects
  
• Teaching Interests
  
• Professional Activities

Qualifications

PhD

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Biography

Dr Mark Temple is a lecturer in Molecular Biology in the School of Biomedical and Health Sciences at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). During his PhD Mark studied chromatin structure (nucleosome positioning and transcription factor binding) during gene expression and cell cycle progression. In addition he studied the interaction of anti-cancer drugs (including cisplatin and some novel analogues) with DNA in human cells.

As a post-doctoral research fellow with Profressor Ian Dawes in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Mark studied ageing and oxidative stress using bakers yeast as a model organism. During the past few years he has become increasingly interested in cell biology, functional genomics and the development of bioinformatics tools for genome-wide dataset analysis.

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Research

Computational approaches to study cell biology

The aim of this project is to apply bioinformatic tools to study cellular responses to reactive oxygen species (ROS) and other stresses. This project is focused on further exploiting these resources using pre-existing bioinformatic tools.

It is envisaged that this project will involve:

• Systematically mining research publications for stress related and other high-throughput data-sets
• Creating a repository of these stress related data using database tools
• Applying a variety of bioinformatic tools (software applications) to identify relationships between gene or protein attributes from this newly created database
• Applying graphing tools to represent these relationships in visual terms (using a node and link metaphor).

Characterisation of DNA-adducts caused by the anti-cancer drug cisplatin and other clinically important platinum based drugs

The main aim of the project in the lab is to examine the formation of DNA-adducts by cisplatin and other closely related platinum based drugs such as Carboplatin and Oxaliplatin. The main focus of these studies is on the formation of DNA adducts since these are thought to be the biologically important sites of action inside cells.

The project looks at the formation and characterisation of DNA adducts in synthetic DNA sequences and will determine which binding proteins contained in cellular extracts recognise specific addicts. The ultimate aim of this project is to better understand the properties of cisplatin-DNA adducts and their recognition by binding proteins.

The role of transcription factors in cellular responses to stress

The project aims to study cellular responses to oxidative stress with a particular focus on oxidant defence transcription factors that affect gene expression. It is envisaged that this project will involve either of the following, to enable the identification of prometer features and transcription factor finding events that stronly correlate with gene regulation:

• Studying changes in the cellular location of transcription factors during stress using fluorescent GFP-tagged transcription factors
• Studying the binding of transcription factor at select promoter sequences (based on analyses of published microarray based gene expression profiles). We will be able to identify promoter features and transcription factor binding events that strongly correlate with gene regulation.

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Selected Publications

Fong, C.S., Temple, M.D., Alic, N., Chiu, J., Durchdewald, M., Thorpe, G. W., Higgins, V.J., & Dawes, I.W. (2008). Oxidant-induced cell-cycle delay in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: the involvement of the SWI6 transcription factor. FEMS Yeast Res, 8, 386-399.

Bain, M., Akand, E., & Temple, M.D. (2007). Learning from Ontological Annotation: an Application of Formal Concept Analysis to Feature Construction in the Gene Ontology. In Advances in Ontologies (Meyer T, and Nayak, A., eds), CRPIT Vol. 85, Australian Computer Society Inc.

Ahsan, N., Bain, M., Potter, J., Gaeta, B., Temple, M.D., & Dawes, I.W. (2006). Learning Causal Networks from Microarray Data. In Intelligent Systems for Bioinformatics (Boden, M., and Bailey, T.L., eds), CRPIT Vol. 73, Australian Computer Society Inc.

Temple, M.D., Perrone, G.G., & Dawes, I.W. (2005). Complex cellular responses to reactive oxygen species. Trends Cell Biol, 15, 319-26.

Temple, M.D., & Murray, V. (2005). Footprinting the 'essential regulatory region' of the retinoblastoma gene promoter in intact human cells. Int J Biochem Cell Biol, 37, 665-78.

Drakulic, T., Temple, M.D., Guido, R., Jarolim, S., Breitenbach, M., Attfield, P.V., & Dawes, I.W. (2005). Involvement of oxidative stress response genes in redox homeostasis, the level of reactive oxygen species, and ageing in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. FEMS Yeast Res, 5, 1215-1228.

Temple, M.D., Freebody, J., & Murray, V. (2004). Genomic and phylogenetic footprinting at the epsilon-globin silencer region in intact human cells. Biochim Biophys Acta, 1678, 126-34.

Alic, N., Felder, T., Temple, M.D., Gloeckner, C., Higgins, V.J., Briza, P., & Dawes, I.W. (2004). Genome-wide transcriptional responses to a lipid hydroperoxide: adaptation occurs without induction of oxidant defenses. Free Radic Biol Med, 37, 23-35.

Temple, M.D., Recabarren, P., McFadyen, W.D., Holmes, R.J., Denny, W.A., & Murray, V. (2002). The interaction of DNA-targeted 9-aminoacridine- 4-carboxamide platinum complexes with DNA in intact human cells. Biochim Biophys Acta, 1574, 223-30.

Attema, J.L., Reeves, R., Murray, V., Levichkin, I., Temple, M.D., Tremethick, D.J., & Shannon, M.F. (2002). The human IL-2 gene promoter can assemble a positioned nucleosome that becomes remodeled upon T cell activation. J Immunol, 169, 2466-76.

Temple, M.D., McFadyen, W.D., Holmes, R.J., Denny, W.A., & Murray, V. (2000). Interaction of cisplatin and DNA-targeted 9-aminoacridine platinum complexes with DNA. Biochem, 398, 5593-9.

Temple, M.D., Cairns, M.J., Kim, A., & Murray, V. (1999). Protein-DNA footprinting of the human epsilon-globin promoter in human intact cells using nitrogen mustard analogues and other DNA-damaging agents. Biochim Biophys Acta, 1445, 245-56.

Temple, M.D., Hinds, M.G., Sheumack, D.D., Howden, M.E., & Norton, R.S. (1999). 1H NMR study of robustoxin, the lethal neurotoxin from the funnel web spider Atrax robustus. Toxicon, 37, 485-506.

Temple, M.D., Cairns, M.J., Denny, W.A., & Murray, V. (1997). Protein- DNA interactions in the human beta-globin locus control region hypersensitive site-2 as revealed by four nitrogen mustards. Nucleic Acids Res, 256, 3255-60.

Murray, V., Whittaker, J., Temple, M.D., & McFadyen, W.D. (1997). Interaction of 11 cisplatin analogues with DNA: characteristic pattern of damage with monofunctional analogues. Biochim Biophys Acta, 1354, 261- 71.

Zachara, N.E., Packer, N.H., Temple, M.D., Slade, M.B., Jardine, D.R., Karuso, P., Moss, C.J., Mabbutt, B.C., Curmi, P.M., Williams, K.L., & Gooley, A.A. (1996). Recombinant prespore-specific antigen from Dictyostelium discoideum is a beta-sheet glycoprotein with a spacer peptide modified by O-linked N-acetylglucosamine. Eur J Biochem, 238, 511-8.

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Grants/Current projects

New Research Project Development Grants UWS (2009). Characterisation of the biological impacts of DNA-adducts caused by the anti-cancer drug cisplatin and other clinically important platinum based drugs.

New Research Project Development Grants UWS (2010). Bioinformatics Web Tools for Functional Genomics.

Research Seed Grant Scheme UWS, Discovery and prediction of transcriptional regulatory networks important in the cellular responses to oxidative stress.

UNSW Faculty Research Grant Program  M. Bain and M. Temple. Web tools for the bioinformatics of gene function.

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Teaching Interests

• Cell Signalling
• Molecular Basis of Disease
• Human Molecular Biology

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Professional Activities

Reviewer of the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS) Yeast Research

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