News from the John Innes Centre

For the first time in nearly a century drinkers will be able to taste beer made from Chevallier, the classic heritage barley from the Victorian period. Old varieties are a rich source of new genes, and scientists at the John Innes Centre revived Chevallier from the institute’s Genetic Resources Unit as part of a barley [...]

The first DNA sequence data on the ash dieback fungus has been made freely available on crowdsourcing website OpenAshDieBack by scientists receiving major funding for a two-year research project. More sequence will be published online and “live reviewed” as it is generated by multiple research partners led by The Sainsbury Laboratory and The John Innes [...]

Professor Enrico Coen from the John Innes Centre has been awarded €2.5M EU funding to explore the growth and evolution of carnivorous plants. “Carnivorous plants turn the normal order of nature upside down, eating animals instead of being eaten by them,” said Karen Lee, a researcher working on the project at the John Innes Centre. [...]

An international team led by Norwich Research Park scientists have been awarded a grant to tackle one of wheat’s worst enemies, yellow rust. This is part of a unique £16M initiative, involving 40 international research organisations, which will harness bioscience to improve food security in developing countries. The grants have been awarded by the Biotechnology [...]

[Department for Business, Innovation and Skills press release] Professor Giles Oldroyd of the John Innes Centre has been awarded £2.5M from the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) to begin developing cereal crops that can ‘fix’ their own nitrogen, making their own fertiliser. This is part of £20M of funding for synthetic biology projects [...]

The John Innes Centre announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Professor George Lomonossoff will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “Plant Immunisation – a technology for crop virus control” “We’re looking for a new way of ‘Immunizing’ [...]

A new project is investigating whether altering the production of an antibiotic will remove side effects preventing it being used clinically to battle drug-resistant superbugs. Tunicamycin is an antibiotic produced by the soil bacterium Streptomyces that was discovered 40 years ago. It works by blocking cell wall production in bacteria in a clinically novel way, [...]

The John Innes Centre will lead a $9.8m research project to investigate whether it is possible to initiate a symbiosis between cereal crops and bacteria. The symbiosis could help cereals access nitrogen from the air to improve yields. The five-year research project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, could have most immediate benefit [...]