News from the John Innes Centre

MonoGram, a network of UK based researchers with an interest in small grain cereal and grass research, has awarded a John Innes Centre researcher with its first Early Career Excellence Award. Dr Christopher Burt was presented with the award at the 2013 Monogram Network Meeting in April, for his research into eyespot, a fungal disease [...]

For the second consecutive year, the John Innes Centre celebrated Fascination of Plants Day 2013, with events on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th May. 350 children from 13 Norfolk schools attended over the two days, taking part in the worldwide celebration of plant science and agriculture, with hands on activities and presentations. Visiting school children [...]

Tomatoes, said to be the world’s most popular fruit, can be made both better-tasting and longer-lasting thanks to UK research with purple GM varieties. “Working with GM tomatoes that are different to normal fruit only by the addition of a specific compound, allows us to pinpoint exactly how to breed in valuable traits,” said Professor [...]

The images were obtained using cryo scanning electron microscopy, where the sample is plunged into liquid nitrogen to freeze it and imaged using the electron microscope. The benefit of this method is that the sample is imaged in as close to its natural state as possible, providing the best quality 3D view of an organism. [...]

  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 [...]

To grow more food more sustainably we need to make plants better at recruiting nutrients and water from soil to seed, according to 12 leading plant scientists writing in Nature.   Essential to this are proteins called membrane transporters. Transporters also effectively carry high-energy molecules to where they are needed, help plants resist pathogens and [...]