John Bonsing

In 1995 Caer Australis came into existence as a website where celebrating Celtic festivals and exploring the history, myths and traditions of the Celts could be presented from Australia. These things had captured our imaginations from meeting others in the Celtic community at home and abroad. At that time I was reaching an end to my career as a research scientist in Sydney in the field of genetic manipulation of stock for higher productivity; the announcement of the production by cloning techniques of Dolly the sheep hit hard at my personal ethics, working as I did in the field of transgenesis. I came to the conclusion that my own endevours lay elsewhere, and having achieved a PhD in biological sciences, results of which have been utilised toward patenting of bovine gene constructs, I felt my capacities to research and form hypotheses, test them and reach reasoned conclusions could be applied to history just as well as to technology. The then boom in neo-pagan thought with its strong influence by Gravesian works such as The White Goddess was intriguing, but already it had become clear that some misconceptions about Celtic matters had firmly become entrenched in popular culture. It was to these I felt compelled to make a contribution; some very basic assumptions, always the cornerstone of any thought-world or idea, were to my eye glaringly unjustified in terms of any justification in claiming they were Celtic, for some notions contradicted the very sources they were claimed to be based on - literally counter to the written records and ancient sources. I had caught the 'bug' of wanting to clarify first to my own satisfaction and then maybe sharing my conclusions on CA. It has been invigorating to say the least in dealing with some reactions to the points being made here on CA, but uncomfortable as that may be at times, it is equally delightful to observe the reactions of those with vested interests.

My personal connection to the Celts is being of European ancestry, from the ancient Celtic territories of Gaul, and childhood sojourns into the French and Dutch forests and, of all things, delight in the Asterix comics. My interest in History had remained equal to that of Science in my younger years, and great debates over evolution v creationism at school and later at uni combined much historical research with scientific, and instilled in me a great desire to test the veracity of any claims, and then to be test, test and test again as conclusions became developed. There is not that great a shift in my interests in the evolution of life on Earth to the development of a people and their culture. Recently I undertook some studies into the Roman Republic to satisfy myself that my research methods were sound, and this was both confirmed and lead to a wealth of more information to study.

Over the years, my doubts about the veracity of many notions about Celtic history and culture have been confirmed, investigated and here reported; today's CA holds the fruits of this ongoing research. Maybe these will be distilled into a volume at some time in the future, but for now they remain available to read and contemplate here on this website. There remains a standing invitation for anyone to provide their feedback on any item published on CA.

For over a decade now it has been an honour to work together with S Rhys Jones in our endevour to deliver a quality contribution to Celtic Australia and beyond. It is a genuine hope that our particular efforts will provide for firm relationships throughout the community and friendships as well.

Eadar dà theine Bhealltuin!
contact John Bonsing
Caer Australis Blog

For those interested, here are links to scientific publication articles about research that I have been a research team member:

Nature vol.371 p563 Preventing hair loss in mice Research into including a cysteine biosynthetic pathway in mammals using transgenesis. This research aims at removing the restrictions of low levels of the amino acid cysteine in Australian pasture grasses by providing a gene system to sheep enabling them to biosynthesise the essential amino acid cysteine from serine. This is hoped to allow wool production to be increased, since cysteine is an important component of hair/wool and the limited amount of cysteine in the diet may correlate to reduced wool production. In this Nature article, our research into the function of this transgene system reached the point where the production of cysteine in transgenic mice allowed them to thrive in a cysteine deficient diet, demonstrating the ability of two modified bacterial genes encoding two enzymes involved in the synthesis of cysteine from serine to function in a mammalian context. This work was conducted in the laboratory of Kevin Ward at CSIRO, Division of Animal Production, Prospect NSW, and much of the type of work conducted there is reviewed in Transgenesis techniques

Molecular Biology and Evolution (1987) vol.4 p.231 Complete nucleotide sequences of the bovine alpha s1- and beta-casein cDNAs: Comparisons with related sequences in other species The DNA coding region sequences of cow milk protein genes were fully determined in Tony Mackinlay's lab at UNSW in the mid 1980s, during which time I acquired my PhD for my role in this research. This paper presents the fine detail DNA sequencing performed, and our evolutionary analysis of the development of these genes in mammalian species. Evidence of point mutation, duplication, deletion and rearrangement of these genes in species was a great insight into the mechanisms of evolution, and provided excellent examples of how small changes in a DNA sequence can have profound consequences in the development of a species. We also were able to prepare a review for the Journal of Dairy Research (Bonsing, J. and Mackinlay, A.G. Recent studies on nucleotide sequences encoding the caseins. J.Dairy.Res. 1987 Aug; 54(3): 447-61 following on from the research presented in the linked paper, plus other work where we analysed and sequenced the actual milk protein genes. The results of my PhD are published in Complete nucleotide sequence of the bovine beta-casein gene. Aust. J. Biol. Sci (1988) 41: 527-37.