Queenstown Research Week is New Zealand's biggest annual scientific gathering.  It is a week of co-ordinated meetings covering a wide range of areas of science.  The concept has developed from three different iconic New Zealand scientific meetings the Australasian Winter Conference on Brain Research, the Queenstown Molecular Biology Meetings and the NZ Medical Sciences Congress (Medsci).  These meetings agreed to co-ordinate their meeting programmes in order to create critical mass.

The Queenstown Research Week concept has allowed us to add a diverse range of satellite meetings every year that allow focused meetings for specialist areas of the New Zealand science community.

Visit our exhibition booth # 5

Live sequencing demonstration at Oxford Nanopore exhibition booth # 5

Monday 28th August, 10:30 am - Introduction and live sequencing demonstration

We will be showcasing a live sequencing run on the booth and hearing from  •    Peter Dearden, University of Otago, Dunedin - The European paper wasp •    Dr Ludovic Dutoit, University of Otago, Dunedin - The wingless grasshopper

Tuesday 29th August, 12:30 pm – Presentation on the European paper wasp

Wednesday 30th August, 3:30 pm – Presentation on the wingless grasshopper

Prof Peter Dearden, University of Otago, Dunedin The European paper wasp (Polistes dominula)

The European paper wasp (Polistes dominula) is a significant invasive pest in Aotearoa New Zealand, only recently introduced into the country approximately ten years ago. This project has previously used Minion long reads to assemble a high-quality genome for P. dominula, which was used for population genomic analyses and pangenome assembly, revealing that there may have been two separate introductions of P. dominula into NZ, one each into the North and South Islands. Long-read sequencing of samples from the two potential separate introductions will allow us to validate this hypothesis, and to understand variation between the two populations and what impacts this may have on future pest control efforts, such as the development of a gene drive.

Dr Ludovic Dutoit, University of Otago, Dunedin The wingless grasshopper (Phaulacridium vittatum)

The wingless gra sshopper (Phaulacridium vittatum) is a close relative to Aotearoa New Zealand short-horned grasshoppers. Here, two native species recently came into contact across the South Island due to anthropogenisation. Uniquely, this wild system readily mates in captivity, combining the relevance of natural populations and the practicalities of experimental systems to approach fundamental questions in the fields of speciation and gene-expression evolution. The sequencing of this genome by Nanopore during Queenstown Research Week will be helpful to a wide-research community and demonstrate the ease of use of this technology in almost any situation.