Fish out of water: How killifish embryos adapted their development

UNIVERSITY OF BASEL

 

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KILLIFISH EMBRYOS UNDER A FLUORESCENCE MICROSCOPE. LEFT WITH A DEVELOPED AXIS, RIGHT WITHOUT FORMATION OF THE AXIS. THE CELLS REMAIN DISPERSED.

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CREDIT: BIOZENTRUM, UNIVERSITY OF BASEL

The annual killifish lives in regions with extreme drought. A research group at the University of Basel now reports in “Science” that the early embryogenesis of killifish diverges from that of other species. Unlike other fish, their body structure is not predetermined from the outset. This could enable the species to survive dry periods unscathed.

The turquoise killifish inhabits areas characterized by extreme conditions. The species, native to Africa, can survive prolonged periods of drought due to its unique life cycle. During humid periods, they lay their fertilized eggs in the mud. When the waters dry out, the adult fish die, while the embryos remain dormant in the dry mud by entering diapause. Once the rain falls, the embryo’s development continues.

In contrast to other animals, the early embryos of killifish completely disperse into individual cells, which later aggregate to form the body axes and the embryo proper. The killifish species Nothobranchius furzeri has thus adapted its embryogenesis and life cycle to its environmental conditions.

Dorsal-ventral body axis
Prof. Alex Schier's team at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, and researchers from Harvard University and the University of Washington in Seattle have discovered that killifish early embryogenesis differs from other fish species also at the molecular level. “Normally, the dorsal-ventral body axis, i.e. the back and the belly of the fish embryo, is already determined by the mother,” says Schier. “We have discovered that embryonic cells of killifish are not maternally pre-patterned, but self-organize to form the body axis.” In their recent publication in “Science”, the researchers describe how the dorsal-ventral axis is formed in killifish.

The so-called Huluwa factor plays a decisive role in early embryonic development in fish. It is passed on from the mother to the embryo and dictates the dorsal-ventral body axis. This is crucial for morphogenesis as well as the correct formation and positioning of organs.

“Previously, it was assumed that Huluwa is indispensable for axis formation,” explains Schier. “We have now been able to show that this factor is inactive in killifish. The embryonic cells find the right place on their own, they completely self-organize after dissociation.” In contrast to other fish, the determination of the dorsal-ventral axis in killifish occurs at a later stage and is regulated by embryonic factors. “The embryo emerges almost magically,” says Schier. “How exactly this happens still remains unclear.”

Well adapted to extreme environmental conditions
“Among fish, annual killifish have an atypical embryonic development that challenges the current concepts of axis formation,” says Schier. The absence of maternal pre-patterning in killifish embryos may offer a survival advantage, preventing the accumulation of damaged cells during dry seasons or the loss of body structure information. “Our study shows that evolution finds alternative developmental routes under selective pressures imposed by extreme environments,” concludes Schier.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ado7604 

ARTICLE TITLE

Axis formation in annual killifish: Nodal and β-catenin regulate morphogenesis without Huluwa prepatterning

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Jun-2024

 

Silkworms help grow better organ-like tissues in labs

A new ultrathin silk membrane for organ-on-a-chip platforms helps cells communicate and grow into functional tissues used for research

DUKE UNIVERSITY

 

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SCANNING ELECTRON MICROGRAPHS SHOW THE DETAILED FIBERS OF THE SF MEMBRANES

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CREDIT: XINGRUI MOU & SAMIRA MUSAH, DUKE UNIVERSITY

DURHAM, N.C. -- Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a silk-based, ultrathin membrane that can be used in organ-on-a-chip models to better mimic the natural environment of cells and tissues within the body. When used in a kidney organ-on-a-chip platform, the membrane helped tissues grow to recreate the functionality of both healthy and diseased kidneys.

By allowing the cells to grow closer together, this new membrane helps researchers to better control the growth and function of the key cells and tissues of any organ, enabling them to more accurately model a wide range of diseases and test therapeutics.

The research appears June 4 in the journal Science Advances.

Often no larger than a USB flash drive, organ-on-a-chip (OOC) systems have revolutionized how researchers study the underlying biology of the human body, whether it’s creating dynamic models of tissue structures, studying organ functions or modeling diseases. These platforms are designed to stimulate cell growth and differentiation in a way that best mimics the organ of interest. Researchers can even populate these tools with human stem cells to generate patient-specific organ models for pre-clinical studies.

But as the technology has evolved, problems in the chip’s design have also emerged –– most notably with the materials used to create the membranes that form the support structure for the specialized cells to grow on. These membranes are typically composed of polymers that don’t degrade, creating a permanent barrier between cells and tissues. While the extracellular membranes in human organs are often less than one micron thick, these polymer membranes are anywhere from 30 to 50 microns, hindering communication between cells and limiting cell growth.

“We want to handle the tissues in these chips just like a pathologist would handle biopsy samples or even living tissues from a patient, but this wasn’t possible with the standard polymer membranes because the extra thickness prevented the cells from forming structures that more closely resemble tissues in the human body,” said Samira Musah, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and medicine at Duke. “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get a protein-based material that mimics the structure of these natural membranes and is thin enough for us to slice and study?’”

This question led Musah and George (Xingrui) Mou, a PhD student in Musah’s lab and first author on the paper, to silk fibroin, a protein created by silkworms that can be electronically spun into a membrane. When examined under a microscope, silk fibroin looks like spaghetti or a Jackson Pollock painting. Made out of long, intertwining fibers, the porous material better mimics the structure of the extracellular matrix found in human organs, and it has previously been used to create scaffolds for purposes like wound healing.

“The silk fibroin allowed us to bring the membrane thickness down from 50 microns to five or fewer, which gets us an order of magnitude closer to what you’d see in a living organism,” explained Mao.

To test this new membrane, Musah and Mao applied the material to their kidney chip models. Made out of a clear plastic and roughly the size of a quarter, this OOC platform is meant to resemble a cross section of a human kidney––specifically the glomerular capillary wall, a key structure in the organ made from clusters of blood vessels that is responsible for filtering blood.

Once the membrane was in place, the team added human induced pluripotent stem cell derivatives into the chip. They observed that these cells were able to send signals across the ultrathin membrane, which helped the cells differentiate into glomerular cells, podocytes and vascular endothelial cells. The platform also triggered the development of endothelial fenestrations in the growing tissue, which are holes that allow for the passage of fluid between the cellular layers.

By the end of the test, these different kidney cell types had assembled into a glomerular capillary wall and could efficiently filter molecules by size.

“The new microfluidic chip system's ability to simulate in vivo-like tissue-tissue interfaces and induce the formation of specialized cells, such as fenestrated endothelium and mature glomerular podocytes from stem cells, holds significant potential for advancing our understanding of human organ development, disease progression, and therapeutic development,” said Musah.

As they continue to optimize their model, Musah and colleagues are hoping to use this technology to better understand the mechanisms behind kidney disease. Despite affecting more than 15 percent of American adults, researchers lack effective models for the disease. Patients are also often not diagnosed until the kidneys have been substantially damaged, and they are often required to undergo dialysis or receive a kidney transplant.

“Using this platform to develop kidney disease models could help us discover new biomarkers of the disease,” said Mao. “This could also be used to help us screen for drug candidates for several kidney disease models. The possibilities are very exciting.”

“This technology has implications for all organ-on-a-chip models,” said Musah. “Our tissues are made up of membranes and interfaces, so you can imagine using this membrane to improve models of other organs, like the brain, liver, and lungs, or other disease states. That’s where the power of our platform really lies.”

This work was supported by a Whitehead Scholarship in Biomedical Research, Chair’s Research Award from the Department of Medicine at Duke University, MEDx Pilot Grant on Biomechanics in Injury or Injury Repair, Burroughs Wellcome Fund PDEP Career Transition Ad Hoc Award, Duke Incubation Fund from the Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, Genetech Research Award, a George M. O’Brien Kidney Center Pilot Grant (P30 DK081943), an NIH Director’s New Innovator Grant (DP2DK138544).

CITATION: “An Ultrathin Membrane Mediates Tissue-Specific Morphogenesis and Barrier Function in a Human Kidney Chip,” Xingrui Mou, Jessica Shah, Yasmin Roye, Carolyn Du, Samira Musah. Science Advances. June 4, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn2689

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adn2689 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Human tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

An Ultrathin Membrane Mediates Tissue-Specific Morphogenesis and Barrier Function in a Human Kidney Chip

COI STATEMENT

S.M. is an inventor on a patent (US20210338736A1) for stem cell differentiation into podocytes, held by Harvard College. S.M. and X.M. are co-inventors on a pending patent application (USPTO application number 64/506190) for the development of a biomaterial membrane for tissue engineering and biomedical applications, held by Duke University. The other authors declare they have no competing interest.

 

Scientists ‘read’ the messages in chemical clues left by coral reef inhabitants

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

 

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A NEW WAY TO COLLECT COMPOUNDS FROM SEAWATER HELPED RESEARCHERS IDENTIFY THREE METABOLITES RELATED TO CORAL REEFS’ INHABITANTS AND POTENTIAL DISEASE STATE.

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CREDIT: AMY APPRILL

What species live in this coral reef, and are they healthy? Chemical clues emitted by marine organisms might hold that information. But in underwater environments, invisible compounds create a complex “soup” that is hard for scientists to decipher. Now, researchers in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research have demonstrated a way to extract and identify these indicator compounds in seawater. They found metabolites previously undetected on reefs, including three that may represent different reef organisms.

Plants and animals living in coral reefs release various substances, from complex macromolecules to individual amino acids, into the surrounding water. To determine which ones could identify the ecosystems’ inhabitants and be used to measure a coral reef’s health, scientists need to prepare water samples for analysis by concentrating the compounds and separating them from the salty broth. They primarily concentrate and collect these dissolved compounds from seawater on sticky membranes. However, this method misses many important nitrogen-, oxygen- and sulfur-containing compounds produced by marine organisms. These metabolites don’t attach well to the membrane materials and are present at extremely low levels in seawater. To overcome these challenges, Brianna Garcia, Amy Apprill, Elizabeth Kujawinski and colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tested a technique that modified the dissolved metabolites before they were extracted from seawater into a form that’s compatible with membrane materials allowing them to be concentrated and analyzed.

First, the researchers collected and filtered water samples from five coral reefs around the U.S. Virgin Islands. They then used a series of reactions to attach a benzoyl functional group to dissolved amine- and alcohol-containing metabolites. Next, the team extracted the modified metabolites from the samples and assessed their composition and concentrations with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. From applying this new technique, the researchers identified 23 metabolites that hadn’t been identified near coral reefs by previous studies, including amino acids, amines, pyrimidine nucleosides and organosulfonic acids, which are involved in photosynthesis and organismal growth. When the researchers analyzed their data, they found that:

• The presence of diseased coral, macroalgae and crustose coralline algae had the greatest influence on the metabolite compositions.
• Some compounds, such as the organosulfonic acid called DHPS, were consistently at high levels in all locations, which suggests the presence of coral and associated organisms.
• Three metabolites (homoserine betaine, tryptophan and γ-aminobutryic acid) had significantly different levels among the five reefs, and the researchers attribute those differences to variations in marine environments and organisms.

The researchers say this study successfully demonstrates how to collect previously overlooked, ecologically relevant compounds in coral reef ecosystems that could be used to monitor them for effects from climate change, natural disturbances and disease activity.

The authors acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Cooperative Institutes.

###

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Proteome Research

DOI

10.1021/acs.jproteome.4c00049 

ARTICLE TITLE

“Benzoyl Chloride Derivatization Advances the Quantification of Dissolved Polar Metabolites on Coral Reefs”

Keir’s army: 14 ex-military candidates standing as Labour makes nuclear vow

James Moules  

2nd June, 2024, 

Credit: John Healey via Twitter/X

More than a dozen ex-military personnel are now standing as general election candidates for Labour amid a drive to bolster the party’s credentials on national security.

Three more armed forces veterans have been confirmed as prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) in the late selections made by the party centrally in the past week, taking the total of ex-service personnel standing for Labour to 14.

It came as Keir Starmer reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to a nuclear deterrent ‘triple lock’ on Monday, including pledges to build four new nuclear submarines in Barrow-in-Furness, maintain continuous at-sea deterrent and ensure all future upgrades are delivered.

Starmer said: “National security will always come first in the changed Labour Party I lead. Keeping our country safe is the bedrock of stability that the British people rightly expect from their government.

“My message to them is clear: Labour has changed. No longer the party of protest, Labour is the Party of national security.

“The excellent former service personnel that are standing as Labour candidates are a testament to that change.”

READ MORE: John Healey: ‘Here’s why Labour is the real party of defence’

The latest batch of ex-military PPCs include former Royal Marines Colonel Al Carns, who will stand for the West Midlands seat of Birmingham Selly Oak.

Army veteran Louise Jones and former RAF commanding officer Calvin Bailey will also be candidates in North East Derbyshire and Leyton and Wanstead respectively.

Labour has also committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.

Shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “The Tories have cut the army to its smallest size since Napoleon, missed recruitment targets every year, and allowed morale to fall to record lows. Our armed forces can’t afford another five years of the Conservatives.

“Britain will be better defended with Labour. In government, the UK’s nuclear deterrent will be the bedrock of Labour’s defence plans to keep Britain safe and grow our economy.”

Starmer’s commitment to Britain’s nuclear deterrent represents a shift in stance from Jeremy Corbyn, who voted against renewal of Trident in July 2016 – despite most Labour MPs voting in favour.

However, the party’s subsequent general election manifesto to following year pledged to renew Trident.

Read more of our 2024 general election coverage here.

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Tags: Parliament / Labour Party / Elections / MPs / General Election / Labour / Rachel Reeves / Conservatives / Politics / Polls / Keir Starmer / UK politics / Rishi Sunak / 2024 general election / general election 2024 / UK Labour Party

James Moules

James Moules is a freelance reporter for LabourList and other publications.jamesmoules

Ming Vase Politics: UK Labour and Purging the Corbynistas

by Binoy Kampmark / June 3rd, 2024

By any reckoning, this was the move of a fool.  A fool, it should be said, motivated by spite larded with caution.  Evidently playing safe, adopting what has been called a “Ming Vase strategy” (hold it with scrupulous care; avoid danger), the British Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer is already laying its own boobytraps to step onto.  This is some feat, given that Labour currently leads the incumbent Tories by such a margin it is projected to win a majority of 194 seats, giving them 422 in all.

With the election campaign still salad green, Starmer has made it clear that a number of the progressive faithful will no longer be expected to keep him company on his way into government – assuming he doesn’t cock matters up before July 4.  A cull is being made of the old Labour guard, and they are not going away quietly.

One is a former leader of the party, an unabashed progressive who has been hugging the left side of politics since he was a callow teenager.  Jeremy Corbyn, a member for London’s Islington North for over four decades and party leader for five years, is running as an independent.  In March, the National Executive Committee (NEC) voted by 22 to 12 to approve a motion proposed by Starmer insisting that it was “not in the best interests of the Labour Party for it to endorse Mr Corbyn as a Labour Party candidate at the next general election.”

The response from Corbyn was resoundingly biting.  The move was a “shameful attack on the party of democracy”, showing “contempt” for those who had voted for the party at the 2017 and 2019 elections.  “If you start shutting down dissent and preventing people from speaking out, it’s not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness.  A sign of strength is when you can absorb and listen to the other person’s arguments,” says Corbyn on the YouTube outlet, Double Down News.

Things were also further muddied by the near juvenile incompetence regarding the future of the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Dianne Abbott, a figure who has been an enduring feature of Labour politics for decades.  She was the first black woman to be elected to Parliament, reliably Left, admirably innumerate and always reliable in having a moment of indiscretion.  (She had been suspended over comments made in a letter to The Observer claiming that Jews, the Irish and Travellers suffered “prejudice” rather than the “racism” suffered by blacks.)  The question here was whether her readmission to the party would qualify her to run again or enable her to journey into a veteran politician’s sunset.

Here was a moment of genuine danger for Labour.  Confusion, always fatal for any party seeking government, ignited.  Was Abbott banned by her party from running at the next election because of her recently spotty record?  Some Labour functionaries thought not, but felt that the NEC should have the last say.  Whispers and rumours suggested the opposite.

Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC bored her readers senseless with a slew of anonymous sources that did little to clear things up.  “She was looking for a way to stand down with dignity when it was blown all up,” one source claimed.  Another is quoted as a “senior ally” of Starmer, suggesting that things had come to a pass.  “Everyone was aware of the symbolism.  We had to draw the line, it couldn’t just go on and on.”

A strategy is certainly afoot to stay, remove or frustrate candidates of a certain left leaning disposition who fail to fit Starmer’s ultra cautious strategy.  They are memory’s heavy burden, a reminder of the roistering, scuffling legacy of the party.  Distilled to its essence, it is a crude and clumsy effort to purge the Corbynistas.  As Katy Balls of The Spectator appropriately describes it, the Labour leader has been selecting “candidates they trust to have a low risk of scandal or rebellion”.

Economist Faiza Shaheen, for instance, has found herself blocked for taking issue with her party’s Middle East policy, though, as she put it, it entailed “14 tweets over 10 years, including me liking a colleague’s tweet saying she was running as a Green councillor, and a retweet containing a list of companies to boycott to support Palestine, both from 2014.”

In an article for The Guardian, Shaheen describes how she was “removed, via email, from being a Labour parliamentary candidate from Chingford and Woodford Green.”  She faced the dreaded NEC regarding her deselection.  “More than four years’ work thrown in the bin.  Any connection to my community brushed aside.”

Shaheen proceeds to make a fundamental, if obvious political point.  “The irony is that taking me off the ballot and replacing me with someone no one in my community knows will jeopardise Labour’s ability to win this seat and finally unseat the Tory grandee Iaian Duncan Smith.”

These instances may not be enough to derail the Labour train that is destined, at this point, of storming into the House of Commons and Number 10 with tearing effect.  But Starmer’s culling program is already taking the shine off the effort.  Abbott has a loyal following.  Those of Corbyn’s are the stuff of legend.  Riling, obstructing and barring such figures serves to cloud the message, impairing an electoral effort that may, ironically enough, see the Ming Vase slip out of Starmer’s desperate hands.Facebook

Tory Nightmares: The Return of Nigel Farage

by Binoy Kampmark / June 5th, 2024

Few have exerted as much influence on the tone, and outcome of elections, as Nigel Farage.  Fewer have done so while failing to win office.  In seven attempts at standing for a seat in the UK House of Commons between 1994 and 2015, the votes to get him across the line have failed to materialise.  Yet it is impossible to imagine the Brexit referendum of 2016, or the victory of the Conservatives under Boris Johnson in 2019, as being possible without his manipulative hand.

Before an audience at the MF Club Health and Wealth Summit at the Tiverton Hotel in March, Farage had words for his country’s voting system, one that notoriously remains stubbornly rooted to the “first past the post” model.  It was a system that had, in his view, eliminated any coherent distinction between the major parties.  They had become “big state, high tax social democrats”.

Farage took the budget as a salient illustration.  The leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, agreed “with virtually everything in the budget.  It would’ve made no difference if Rachel Reeves had delivered that budget instead of Jeremy Hunt.  They are all the same.”

Having been made leader of the populist Reform UK party for the next five years, Farage felt it was time to make another tilt.  On June 3, he announced that he would be standing in the July 4 election in the Essex constituency of Clacton, one that had conclusively voted to leave the European Union in 2016.  It is also the only constituency to have ever elected an MP from UKIP, Reform UK’s previous iteration.  The decision concluded a prolonged phase of indecision.  And it will terrify the Tory strategists.

The speech offered little by way of surprises.  The usual dark clouds were present.  The failure by both Labour and the Conservatives to halt the tide of immigration.  Rates of crushing taxation.  General ignorance of Britain’s finest achievements battling tyranny, including a lack of awareness about such glorious events as D-Day.  The poor state of public services, including the National Health Service.  A state of “moral decline”.  Rampant crime.  In the UK, one could “go shoplifting and nick up to 200 quid’s worth of kit before anyone is even going to prosecute you.”

From the view of the Conservatives, who already risk electoral annihilation at the polls, Reform UK was always going to be dangerous.  Roughly one in four voters who helped inflate Johnson’s numbers in 2019 are considering voting for it.  It explains various efforts by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, including his insensibly cruel Rwanda plan, to court a voting base that he hopes will return to the Tory fold.

Unfortunately for the PM, such efforts will hardly matter now that the real Nigel is running.  “The pint-loving populist offers a splash of colour in an otherwise grey campaign,” suggests Robert Ford in The Spectator.  “The result will be a constant background hum of populist criticism undermining Tory promises and reinforcing voters’ doubts.”

Veteran British commentator Andrew Marr relished the irony: here was the architect of the Brexit victory bringing calamity to the Conservatives.  Farage had effectively raised “the pirate flag of what he calls ‘a political revolt’ against the entire Westminster class; but in particular against the listing, drifting and battered galleon that is the Tory party.”

Leaving aside – and there is much on that score – the issue of Farage’s Little England image, his presence in the Commons would come with various promises that will rock Britain’s political establishment.  There is, for instance, the proposal for electoral reform, one long strangled and smothered in the cot by the main parties.  Finally, he insists, a proportional representation model of voting can be introduced that will make Westminster more representative.

He also proposes ridding Britain of the House of Lords in its current form, replacing it with what would essentially make it an elected chamber accountable to voters.  This “abomination” and “disgrace” of an institution had become the destination for shameless political hacks favoured by Labor and Tory prime ministers.  “It’s now made up of hundreds of mates of Tony Blair and David Cameron; they’re the same blooming people,” he rattled to the entrepreneurs at the Tiverton Hotel.  “They all live within the same three postcodes in West London.  They’re not representative of the country in any way at all.”

There is a case to be made for Farage to stay behind the throne of UK politics, influencing matters as sometimes befuddled kingmaker.  Even if he fails at this eighth attempt – and given current polling, Reform UK is not on course to win a single seat – there is every chance that he will have a direct say in the way the Conservatives approach matters while in opposition.  He might even play the role of a usurping Bolingbroke, taking over the leadership of a party he promises to inflict much harm upon next month.  Short of that, he can have first dibs at the selection of a far more reactionary leader from its thinned ranks. The Farage factor will again become hauntingly critical to the gloomy fate of British politics.






 

Inexplicable Investments: Elbit Systems and

Australia’s Future Fund

by Binoy Kampmark / June 4th, 2024

Australia’s modest sovereign wealth fund, modestly standing at A$272.3 billion, has crawled into some trouble of late.  Investors, morally twinged, are keeping an eye on where the money of the Australian Future Fund goes.  Inevitably, a good slice of it seems to be parked in the military-industrial complex, a sector that performs on demand.

Filed last October, a Freedom of Information request by Greens Senator David Shoebridge revealed that as much as A$600 million in public funds had found their way into defence company assets.  In December, it was reported that the 30 defence and aerospace companies featured, with some of them receiving the following: Thales (A$3.5 million), Lockheed Martin (A$71 million), BAE Systems (A$26 million), Boeing (A$10.7 million), Rocket Lab USA (A$192 million) and Elbit Systems (A$488,768).

The findings gave Shoebridge a chance to spray the board administering the fund with gobbets of chastening wisdom.  “The Future Fund is meant to benefit future generations.  That rings hollow when they are investing in companies making equipment that ends future generations.”

Some cleansing of the stables was on offer, and the choice of what was cleaned proved popular – at least for the Canberra security establishment.  In May, the Board upped stakes and divested from funds associated with the People’s Liberation Army of China.  Eleven companies were noted, among them Xinjiang Guanghui Energy, a natural gas and coal producer whose chairman, Sun Guangxin, teased US officials by purchasing ranches for reasons of building a wind farm in proximity to a US Air Force base in Texas.

Relevant companies included Jiangsu GoodWe and LONGi, both with expertise in the line of solar energy generation.  “Taxpayer funds and Australians’ retirement savings should never be invested in companies linked to serious human rights abuses, sanctions evasion or military suppliers to an authoritarian state,” gloated a satisfied opposition home affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson.  The same, it would seem, would not apply to human rights abuses committed by a purported democratic state.

To that end, things are somewhat murkier when it comes to the companies of other, friendlier powers.  For some obstinate reason, Israel’s military poster boy, Elbit Systems, continues to make its presence felt in the field of Australian defence and finance.  Despite a spotty reputation and a resume of lethal drone production; despite the ongoing murderous conflict in Gaza, the Israeli defence company managed to convince the Australian government to throw A$917 million its way in a contract signed in February.  The contract, to be performed over a period of five years, will supply “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) of Korean design.  With wonderful opportunism, the vehicles are being constructed in the same electorate that belongs to the Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles.

And what of the near half-million dollars invested by the Future Fund in Elbit Systems?  In October 2023, a list of the Fund’s direct holdings in various companies was published.  It included Elbit Systems.  An odd matter, given that the company, since 2021, is precluded from investing in the fund given, as Shoebridge tells us, the ratification by Australia of various “military weapons-related conventions or treaties”.  The board, accordingly, had to furnish reasons “how it continues to invest in Elbit Systems despite the publicly announced direction it gave to withdraw those funds because of Australia’s international legal obligations.”

The internal correspondence of December 7, 2023, prompted by Shoebridge’s FOI request, including the prodding of Michael West Media, proved arid in detail. A Canberra bureaucrat in finance asks  an official associated or attached to the Future Fund (both names are redacted) to clarify the status of Elbit Systems in terms of the exclusion list.  The reply notes the role of “expert third party service providers” (who, pray?) who keep an eye on company activities and provide research upon which a decision is made by the Board every six months.

Elbit had been previously excluded as an investment option “in relation to its involvement in cluster munitions following its acquisition of IMI [Systems]”.  IMI, rather than Elbit, was the spoiling consideration, given its role in producing technology that violates the Convention on Cluster Munitions.  As of April 2023, Elbit was “no longer excluded by the portfolio.  This reflects the updated research of our expert research providers.”

The response is not obliging on the exact details of the research.  Banal talking points and information stifling platitudes are suggested, crude filling for the news cycle.  The Board, for instance, had “a long-standing policy on portfolio exclusions and a robust process to implement” them.  The policy was reviewed twice a year, buttressed by expert third party research.  Recent media reporting had relied on an outdated exclusions list.  The Board did not invest in those entities on the exclusions list.  For the media establishment, this would have more than sufficed.  The Board had said, and revealed, nothing.

Last month, Michael West noted that efforts to penetrate the veil of inscrutability had so far come to naught.  The Future Fund and its Board of Guardians persisted in their refusal to respond to inquiries.  “Since our last media request for comment, Israel has ramped up its war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.”  Given various interim orders by the International Court of Justice warning Israel of a real risk of committing genocide, even as it ponders South Africa’s application to make that finding, what are those expert researchers up to?

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.