Associate Professor Rick Wetherbee
| Location |
Botany Building 122 Rm 102-104 |
| Phone | +61 3 8344 5057 (w) |
| Fax | +61 3 9347 5460 |
| richardw@unimelb.edu.au | |
| URL | www.botany.unimelb.edu.au/RW/home.html |
University Research Themes
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Plant and animal systematics and evolution
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Marine biology
Research Interests
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Biofouling by slimes on marine surfaces
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Mechanisms of bioadhesion and the bioadhesives of diatoms
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Characterizing the photosynthetic Protists that inhabit marine sediments and how they survive in their dynamic habitat.
Research Group
Key Publications
Dugdale, T.M.; Dagastine, R.; Chiovitti, A.; Mulvaney, P.; Wetherbee, R. “Single adhesive nanofibers from a live diatom have the signature fingerprint of modular proteins.” Biophysical J. 2005, 89, 4252-4260.
Dugdale, T.M.; Dagastine, R.; Chiovitti, A.; Wetherbee, R. “Diatom adhesive mucilage contains distinct supramolecular assemblies of a single modular protein.” Biophysical J. 2006, 90, 2987-2993
Molino, P.J. and Wetherbee, R. “The biology of biofouling diatoms and their role in the developent of microbial slimes”. Biofouling 2008 24, 365-379.
Chiovitti, A.; Heraud, P; Dugdale, T.M.; Hodson, O.M.; Curtain, R.C.A; Dagastine, R.R., Wood, R. W and Wetherbee, R. “Divalent cations stabilize the aggregation of sulfated glycoproteins in the adhesive nanofibers of the biofouling diatom Toxarium undulatum”. Soft Matter 2008 4, 811-820.
Molino, P.J.; Hodson, O.M.; Quinn, J.F. and Wetherbee, R. “The quartz crystal microbalance: a new tool for the investigation of the bioadhesion of diatoms to surfaces of differing surface energies”. Langmuir 2008 24, 6730-6737.