Author: Douglas Orr (Page 5 of 8)

A warm, sunny Lancaster welcome to Nathalia, who joins on a 6 month placement to study heat stress.

Nathalia is visiting us from Universidade Federal de Lavras (Federal University of Lavras), continuing the strong links between the 2 universities and in agricultural research.

Well done to Sophie Young, Lundgren Lab PhD student, who has just published a new study in the Journal of Experimental Botany on ecological niches of C4 trees.
Check out the article from Sophie, Marj and colleagues comparing C3 and C4 trees, to better understand some of  the questions around how and why C4 is so rare in trees.

A new paper by a team of wheat researchers including Elizabete is now online at Nature Food, discussing integration of different physiological traits to improve wheat yields.
You can also see an article from CIMMYT here.
Well done to Elizabete and colleagues!

There are currently 2 projects advertised to join us for a PhD to work on photosynthesis!

One project is on cowpea and studying how to improve its productivity and resilience to heat stress. This is supervised by Elizabete and one of our African cowpea collaborators Sanatu Mustapha Alidu at Tamale in Northern Ghana. It includes work on physiology, phenotyping,  biochemistry, and molecular biology. It also includes the chance to be a part of field trials with cowpea at Tamale. Details: https://t.co/4EsJSakQho

Doug also has a project advertised to investigate sugar phosphatases, and understanding how the regulation of these enzymes contributes to how plants regulate carbon assimilation. It includes work with biochemistry, molecular biology, and physiology. Details: https://t.co/mXE1FApYQd

Both of these projects align with our work as part of the wider RIPE project on Realising Improved Photosynthetic Efficiency, and improving crops for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

This is a competitive process with applications welcome from anywhere, some places in this program are reserved for non-UK students.

The links above also have details of how to apply.

Applications close 20th May.

Informal enquiries can be sent to Elizabete or Doug, but all applications must be submitted via the instructions described on the LEC website.

Congrats to a team of people involving UK (Lancaster), US (Illinois), and Nigerian (Amhadu Bello & IITA) based researchers who just published a study on field and glasshouse grown cowpea in Legume Science.    This was a great team effort with fieldwork in Illinois by Anthony, glasshouse experiments in Lancaster led by undergrad dissertation student Nicole supported by Rhiannon and Emmanuel, and important input from collaborators in Nigeria with direct ties to breeders.

Well done everyone!

Paper (Open Access): https://doi.org/10.1002/leg3.144
News article:  Helping to breed better cowpea crops

A sunny Lancaster welcome to Ana Karla Lobo who has just begun working on the EU funded PhotoBoost project here in LEC.

Ana Karla previously visited the team in Lancaster for a short N8 Agrifood project on wheat Ca1Pase which gave surprising results (click here for the Plant Physiology paper [open access]).

She and Supreeta will be working together on potato and rice at LEC, and with the wider PhotoBoost community.

A big Lancaster welcome to Joana Amaral who started today with the team as part of the EU funded CAPITALISE project.

Joana will be working on improving photosynthesis and productivity in barley, maize, and tomato.

Congratulations to former Masters student, now PhD student Louis, whose work on homoeolog expression in hexaploid wheat has just been published in Photosynthesis Research!

Louis did a great job shifting from a planned lab-based project to a primarily in silico project, and it was an impressive feat to adapt to this change, and get this work all the way to publication.

Congratulations to members of the team working on the RIPE project, who have today published in Nature Plants on how Rubisco deactivation limits cowpea productivity.

This has been a big undertaking by the team, led by Sam and Elizabete. Well done!

You can see the news article here and a direct link to the paper here.

This week we have a blog piece from Alice Robijns on her time with us at Lancaster working on RIPE & Rubisco.

After a very productive year, she’s just recently joined Wanne Kromdijk and his group to do a PhD on C4 photosynthesis.

In a year which was characterised by coming in and out of COVID-19 lockdowns, I felt extremely lucky that I was able to join the photosynthesis group in Lancaster, and work on a subject I am passionate about.

Rubisco is such an exciting part of photosynthesis to look at: as the central enzyme, it links up the light-dependent and light-independent reactions. Despite this, there is still a lot we don’t know about Rubisco, and being able to work with the team in Lancaster, many of whom have worked on Rubisco for a long time, was so valuable for my understanding and development. Most of my lab work focused on using molecular biology to develop new tools to help us dive deeper into Rubisco biochemistry. If I’ve learnt anything about science the last couple of years, is that nothing is quite as simple as the protocol will tell you, especially for cloning. Doug helpfully described it as ‘voodoo’ when I was complaining about my PCRs not working without apparent reason… While this was frustrating at times, it was also immensely satisfying when things did finally work. It was a new experience for me to feel so independent and competent in the lab, and even being someone that other people asked for advice!

I also was reminded this year of how creative working in science is. When one of my synthesised genes didn’t arrive for a while due to COVID and Brexit-related delays, I was able to do some computational analyses of DNA and protein sequences and reviewing past literature on Rubisco regulation. I really enjoyed this opportunity to develop my scientific thinking and analysis.

Of course, the biggest reason I had such an enjoyable time was because I felt so welcomed by everyone there, despite social distancing and having to wear a mask. Days in the lab were characterised by conversations about home-schooling, adventures in the Lake District and radio on Fridays. Outside of work, I had a great time exploring the areas around Lancaster, particularly the Lake District and going for swims in Morecambe Bay. I adopted a swiss cheese plant with a friend who we named Wallace.

Now, I have started my PhD at Cambridge University, working on photoprotection in C₄ plants, and my first lab work to do is golden gate cloning! I had a really great time in Lancaster: I learnt a huge amount, came to be fascinated about Rubisco and how it works, and made the most of a year that only a few months before had seemed very unsure. Lastly, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone in the lab, especially Elizabete who gave me the position and Rhiannon, Mike and Doug who supported me with my experiments.

A big thanks from the Lancaster photosynthesis team for all your contributions Alice, and best wishes for your PhD studies!