Her work has also won her a place as one of 16 young Australian scientists whose work is being introduced into the public arena under the banner of Fresh Science – a national science awareness program sponsored by the Victorian Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development and the Australian Government’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST).
Ms Burgess, an agricultural sciences PhD student, has taken her diagnostic research one step closer to the development of an automatic sniffing device that will identify dangerous parasitic infections in sheep - such as small brown stomach worms, barbers pole worm or the black scour worm - from the odour of sheep faeces.
Encouraged by the earlier success of “Seb”, a German shepherd sniffer dog trained at La Trobe University to detect parasite-infected sheep faeces, Ms Burgess is now researching new systems for detecting whether the odour of sheep faeces changes when an animal’s digestive system is infected by parasites.
Under the joint supervision of Dr Mark Sandeman (La Trobe University Department of Agricultural Sciences) and Dr John Traeger (Department of Chemistry), the young scientist set out to develop new diagnostic techniques that will deliver faster diagnoses – by asking “ what compounds might Seb the sniffer dog have been smelling?” and “can we design a device to do what Seb does?”
Her project replaces the use of a sniffer dog with a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer, which identifies specific molecules associated with the odour of parasite-infected faeces. Odour molecules associated with the small brown stomach worm have already been identified using this equipment, and research is now underway to identify compounds linked with the odour of barbers pole and black scour worms.
By identifying specific odours associated with the presence of the parasites, the project will enable the researchers to design an electronic ‘nose’ device to detect them – ultimately leading to a refined version of the detector using biosensor technology that allows automatic checking of sheep.
This would potentially mean great savings for the Australian livestock industry which suffers serious financial burden and animal deaths from intestinal parasites.
It is expected that detectors may one day be integrated with Australian Sheep Industry CRC -developed, automatic weighing and monitoring systems, with the electronic tag numbers of parasite-infected automatically transmitted to the farmers’ computer.
Although this is a long term goal, researchers are confident they will have a prototype of at least a “poo- sniffing” device within five years.
If a producer could identify the individual sheep requiring treatment from those that don’t, the costs and labour associated with maintaining a healthy flock of sheep would be considerably reduced. The research is being undertaken with the financial aid of the Australian Sheep Industry CRC.Tuesday, 28 August 2007Young scientist recognised for Fresh Science - on the trail of worm odours in sheep poo La Trobe University Doctoral student Jacqueline Burgess has identified odour molecules associated with the small brown stomach worm in sheep – a discovery that has brought forward the prospect of combating serious production losses in Australia’s livestock industry from parasitic worms.
Inquiries
Jacqueline Burgess, Email: jl2burgess@students.latrobe.edu.au
Fresh Science: Sarah Brooker Tel: 0413 332 489; Niall Byrne: 0417 131 977 or niall@freshscience.org