News from the John Innes Centre

  The enthusiasm of a school biology teacher helped fuel Professor Mervyn Bibb’s own curiosity. Today, as antibiotic resistance nears a crisis point, his work to understand how soil bacteria produce antibiotics is more vital than ever. What sparked your interest in science? I have always been interested in the “natural world”, but it was [...]

  Receiving his first microscope hooked Professor Mike Bevan on biology. He has pioneered insights taken up by the crop biotech industry and with his current work aims to increase food production.    Did an outdoorsy upbringing in New Zealand help spark your interest in science? I was brought up on a remote sheep farm [...]

Two scientists from the John Innes Centre have been elected as Fellows of the Royal Society, the premier scientific accolade in the UK. Their breakthroughs in fundamental research have pioneered advances in antibiotic discovery and in crop improvement from which we all benefit. Professor Mike Bevan pioneered methods for expressing foreign genes in plants that [...]

Scientists from around the world will benefit from five days’ training at the John Innes Centre on bacteria that cause disease in economically important crops including maize, potato and apple. They will learn the complex techniques required to stitch together the genomes of phytoplasmas. Phytoplasmas are a class of bacteria able to modify their plant [...]

JIC’s molecular microbiology department has recruited a new project leader. Dr Barrie Wilkinson joins JIC from Cambridge drug discovery company Biotica, where he was vice president for research. The importance of the department’s research was highlighted recently when the UK chief medical officer Professor Sally Davies warned of the ‘catastrophic threat” of antimicrobial resistance. She [...]

  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 [...]

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. [...]

Why are some leaves curly, others spiky, and others flat? Listen to the recent BBC radio discussion, Forum, in which  John Innes scientist professor Enrico Coen discusses these questions with New York photographer Andrew Zuckerman, and ecology professor Lars Chittka. Bridget Kendall brings together these three experts to ponder some of nature’s mysteries. Enrico Coen [...]