These open access research lectures were delivered at the Gatsby Plant Science Summer Schools by leading plant scientists about their research. The talks are deliberately pitched at a level to engage undergraduate students. The research lectures cover a broad range of cutting-edge plant science research that address globally relevant applied initiatives as well as curiosity-driven research. These online research lectures have proved popular with undergraduates. More lectures can be viewed through the Plant Science TREE
Translation of Educational Resources. We are currently working in partnership with the Global Plant Council and plant science volunteers to translate undergraduate research lectures that are curently available in English into other langauges, so as to widen their global reach.
Italian, Spanish and Portuguese transcripts are now available for selected lectures . To download translated transcripts please select the relevant lecture below and click on the flag.
Summer School lecture by Prof Beverley Glover
View lecture Translation Initiative in partnership with the Global Plant Council Portuguese lecture translation Prof Beverley Glover University of Cambridge: "Flowering plant diversity: development, function and evolution". |
Summer School lecture by Prof Malcolm Bennett
View lecture Translation Initiative in partnership with the Global Plant Council Prof Malcolm Bennett, University of Nottingham: 'What happens below ground? A multidisciplinary approach to Root Biology' Abstract: Food security represents a pressing global issue. Crop production has to double by 2050 to keep pace with global population growth increasing to 9 billion. This target is even more challenging given the impact of climate change on water availability and the drive to reduce fertilizer inputs to make agriculture become more environmentally sustainable. In both cases, developing crops with improved water and nutrient uptake efficiency would provide the solution. Root architecture critically influences nutrient and water uptake efficiency. For example, rooting depth impacts the efficient acquisition of soil nitrogen (and water) since nitrate leaches deep into the soil. In contrast, phosphate use efficiency could be significantly improved without increasing root depth by manipulating the angle of root growth to better explore the topsoil where this macronutrient accumulates. Over recent decades, we have gained detailed knowledge about many genes and mechanisms controlling root growth and development using the model plant Arabidopsis. However, with this knowledge comes increased complexity and a pressing need for mechanistic modelling to understand how these individual processes interact. This will require us to move beyond the gene and network scale and use multiscale modeling to predict emergent properties at the level of the organ and organism. This requires information about the key gene regulatory networks, cell and tissue geometries, mechanics and hydraulics. Whilst challenging, it is clear that multiscale models are set to become increasingly important to researchers if we are to bridge the 'genotype to phenotype gap'. I will describe how we are building multiscale models to study gravitropism and uncover the mechanisms controlling root angle. Phenotype represents the output of the interaction between genotype and environment. Environmental factors include physical properties of the soil, microbes, water availability, nitrogen distribution, macro/micro elements and competition with other root systems. X-ray micro CT imaging has the potential to provide rich data sets, enabling measurements of many of these root and soil parameters. Armed with such information, we will be well placed to bridge the genotype–phenotype gap and parameterize predictive models designed to optimise novel crop root architectures for soil types and nutrient regimes. Speaker profile: Malcolm Bennett is Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Nottingham and the Director of the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (CPIB). He also currently holds 5 year BBSRC Professorial Fellowship and ERC Advanced Investigator awards to improve crop root architecture. Root biology has been an enduring interest throughout his research career. He spent his early career in the US and later at Warwick using the model plant Arabidopsis to isolate important root regulatory genes including AUX1, the first auxin transport protein to be identified in plants. He later moved to Nottingham where he co-founded the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (CPIB), a multidisciplinary Institute that integrates maths, computer science, engineering and biological approaches to study the mechanisms regulating root growth and development. He recently co-founded a Rhizosphere research centre to study root-environment interactions employing non-invasive imaging techniques and select crops with improved root systems architecture. For more information, see a recent Q&A article in Current Biology at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212013772 Italian lecture translation available at: http://www.tree.leeds.ac.uk/tree/uploads/Lectures/Translations/ProfMalcolmBennett_Italian.pdf |
Summer School lecture by Prof Andrew Millar
View lecture Translation Initiative in partnership with the Global Plant Council Prof Andrew Millar, University of Edinburgh Abstract: Few habitats escape the day/night rhythms of the Earth’s rotation, so it’s no surprise that almost all organisms have evolved to take advantage of this predictable, environmental change. The 24-hour biological clock controls the familiar, human sleep/wake cycle, and also nitrogen fixation in cyanobacteria, sporulation in fungi, and the expression of ~30% of Arabidopsis genes. These in turn control plant processes from germination to flowering, fragrance production to photosynthesis. About 20 “clock genes” have been identified, including several transcription factors. These cogs and gears of the clock are required to generate the near-24-hour ‘circadian’ timing, and to rhythmically regulate the thousands of downstream genes. Among those clock-controlled genes, the daylength sensor genes CO and FKF1 integrate light and timing signals, to calculate day length. This information contributes to a crucial decision (especially for an annual plant like Arabidopsis): when to flower and set seed. In this way, the 24-hour clock controls breeding over the 365-day, seasonal cycle. We now understand the daylength sensor well enough in Arabidopsis to predict new regulators based on mathematical models of the gene circuit, and the same circuit seems to operate in cereal crops. Seasonal breeding is also important in animals, but some of the key genes are not yet identified. The 20-odd clock genes regulate each other by negative feedback, in a complicated, interlocking circuit. Mathematical models suggest that this circuit can generate the fine control that we observe in plant rhythms. Animal, fungal and cyanobacterial clocks have similar gene circuits, but surprisingly they have evolved with completely different genes. My lab and our collaborators recently discovered a completely different clock mechanism. This does not require transcription, and is shared at least from humans to a marine micro-alga, quite possibly in bacteria and archaea as well. We now seek to understand this, ancestral timer. Speaker Profile: Andrew grew up in Luxembourg and studied Genetics at Cambridge University. He began working on biological rhythms in 1988 during his Ph.D. with Nam-Hai Chua at The Rockefeller University, New York. After postdoctoral research with Steve Kay and Gene Block at the NSF Center for Biological Timing at the University of Virginia, he worked from 1996 to 2004 at the University of Warwick. There he collaborated with Matthew Turner on mathematical models of the plant clock, and with David Rand on model analysis, leading to his current interests in Systems Biology. Andrew holds the chair of Systems Biology at the University of Edinburgh, and is associate director of SynthSys, Edinburgh’s Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology. His lab combines molecular, physiological, and mathematical approaches in his research on the circadian clock in Arabidopsis thaliana and Ostreococcus tauri. Italian lecture translation available at: http://www.tree.leeds.ac.uk/tree/uploads/Lectures/Translations/ProfAndrewMillar_Italian.pdf |
Summer School lecture by Prof Sophien Kamoun
View lecture Prof Sophien Kamoun, Sainsbury lab Norwich Abstract: Plant pathogens, such as fungi, oomycetes, and bacteria, cause highly destructive diseases that negatively impact commercial and subsistence agriculture worldwide. They have emerged as a significant threat to global food security. The most sustainable strategy to manage plant diseases is to breed broad-spectrum resistance into crop plants. However, current disease resistance breeding approaches are slow, inefficient, and have taken little advantage of emerging knowledge of pathogen mechanisms. Plant disease resistance genes have been identified, bred, and deployed in agriculture without detailed knowledge of the pathogen molecules they are sensing – a ‘blind’ approach. In this presentation, I will describe how state of the art findings on pathogen biology can be exploited to drive the development of new approaches to breeding disease resistant crops. I will illustrate the concepts with examples involving one of the most notorious plant pathogens, the Irish potato famine organism Phytophthora infestans that causes late blight of potato and tomato. Speaker Profile: Sophien Kamoun is a senior scientist and Head of The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK. He received his B.S. degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, France, and his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis, USA. He held a faculty position at Ohio State University, USA, in the Department of Plant Pathology, before joining The Sainsbury Laboratory in 2007. His recent research focuses on plant pathogenomics, filamentous pathogen effector biology and devising new approaches to breeding disease-resistant crops. Follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/KamounLab |
Summer School lecture by Prof Cathie Martin
View lecture Prof Cathie Martin, John Innes Centre Abstract: The past 20 years has seen an enormous rise in publicity about super foods that promote health and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and age-related degenerative diseases, related specifically to the metabolic syndrome. These claims are supported by evidence from cell studies, animal feeding trials, human intervention studies and epidemiological studies. However, despite all the positive messages about the value of eating fruit and vegetables (the 5-aday program has been running for 25 years) the numbers of people meeting these dietary recommendations in the US remains below 25% of the population, numbers are falling, and chronic diseases, especially those associated with obesity and the metabolic syndrome, are reaching epidemic proportions in Western societies. There is a need to engineer high levels of protective bioactives in the foods that people actually do consume, to help combat this rise in chronic diseases. Most attempts at engineering the levels of bioactives have focused on increasing the activity of key, rate-limiting steps, but such strategies usually result in only modest improvements in flux to bioactive end-products. Use of transcription factors to up-regulate entire pathways of plant secondary metabolism is a far more effective strategy and results in food material with very significantly elevated levels of health-promoting bioactives. While such improvements may, in part, be achievable for some crops through selective breeding, genetic modification offers bigger improvements because it can overcome limits in the natural variation available in transcription factor specificity and activity. Use of genetically improved foods in animal feeding studies with models of tumorigenesis have revealed that protection is afforded by diets enriched in high bioactive foods. Such health-promoting foods will offer consumers tangible improvements in the products available to them, and have the potential for public approval of genetically improved plant varieties and foods derived from them. Speaker Profile: My interests span the entire spectrum of plant biology, from the fundamental to the applied ends. Recently, I have engineered phenylpropanoid metabolism using transcription factors to improve foods (Nature Biotech, 2004, 2008, Plant J, 2008) and demonstrated that elevated dietary anthocyanin levels extend the life span of cancer prone mice (Nature Biotech, 2008) and afford cardioprotection (J. Nutr, 2008). I co-ordinated an FP6 project, FLORA, which linked the activities of plant geneticists, metabolic engineers, chemists, nutritionalists, food technologists, cardiologists, epidemiologists to develop model foods with defined levels of flavonoid bioactives and to investigate the health promoting effects of these foods. Currently I am co-ordinating an FP7 project, ATHENA, to assess benefits and risks, modes of action, activities in foods and effects in humans, of dietary anthocyanins. I formed a spin-out company with Professor Jonathan Jones to develop varieties of tomatoes and potatoes with advantages for consumers. In 2008 I was appointed as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of The Plant Cell, the top journal for primary plant research. I have resourced the funding of a new editor to develop a unique tool: Teaching Tools in Plant Biology, designed to communicate state-of-the art science at undergraduate level and to bring research closer to the university classroom. |
Summer School lecture by Prof Alastair Fitter
View lecture Prof Alastair Fitter, University of York Abstract: Population issues are receiving renewed attention from both scientists and policy-makers and well-founded predictions of likely global population growth have given new urgency to concerns about food security and loss of ecosystem services. Plant science has a central role to play in making it possible to feed the entire human population properly and to put an end to the scandal of global poverty. One of our biggest challenges is to learn how to manage land in such a way that it delivers multiple services, especially to make enhanced food production compatible with other ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water supply and the maintenance of biodiversity Speaker Profile: Alastair Fitter is Professor of Ecology at the University of York. His research focuses on plant-soil interactions and mycorrhizal symbioses, especially in relation to the biological impacts of climate change, and on ecosystem services. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Vice-President of the International Association of Ecology (INTECOL). He was appointed CBE in 2009. He chaired the European Academies Science Advisory Council group on Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in Europe and was a member of the expert review group for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment and of the Royal Society group on People and Planet. He is an author of numerous popular natural history books, principally on plant identification. |
Summer School lecture by Dr Robert Zeigler
View lecture Dr Robert Zeigler, IRRI Abstract: Rice is the most important food crop of the developing world and the staple food of more than half of the world’s population, many of whom are also extremely vulnerable to high rice prices. In developing countries alone, more than 3.3 billion people depend on rice for more than 20% of their calories. One fifth of the world’s population, more than 1 billion people, depends on rice cultivation for livelihoods. Harvested from 158 million hectares annually, rice has twice the value of production in the developing world of any other food crop: more than $150 billion per year. Nearly 560 million people living on less than US$1.25 (purchasing power parity [PPP]) per day are in rice-producing areas, far more than for any other crop. Rice remains productive in flooded environments where most other crops would fail. Production systems are unique and the longevity of rice farming speaks for itself. Irrigated lowland rice, which makes up three-quarters of the world rice supply, is the only crop that can be grown continuously without the need for rotation and can produce up to three harvests a year—literally for centuries, on the same plot of land. To maintain future global rice supplies many challenges must be addressed. There will be less land, labour and water available as economies grow, urbanization continues and populations increase. The effect of climate change will only exacerbate the challenges. The research pipeline must be fortified to insure a steady supply of new technologies suitable for adoption by small holder rice farmers. Increased investments are required by both the public and private sectors in the following thematic areas:
Speaker Profile: Robert ”Bob” Zeigler is an internationally respected plant pathologist with more than 30 years of experience in agricultural research in the developing world. He is currently the director general and chief executive officer of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). IRRI has around 1,300 scientists and support staff. Its headquarters are in the Philippines, with offices in 15 countries and activities in more than 25 others. IRRI focuses on sustaining, understanding, and using the genetic diversity of rice to improve rice productivity and the livelihood of rice farmers and consumers. There is also a major research emphasis on improving sustainable production practices and understanding the social and political context in which improved rice production systems operate. Dr. Zeigler's research career has focused on the genetics of host plant resistance, the interaction of plants and their pathogens and pathogen population biology. Most of his work has been with rice and its pathogens. Dr. Zeigler is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Phytopathological Society and is a member of the honor societies Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society) and Gamma Sigma Delta (agriculture). He is the recipient of several other prestigious awards throughout his career. He earned degrees at Cornell University (Ph.D), Oregon State University, and the University of Illinois (High Honors). Dr. Zeigler has authored and co-authored well over 100 refereed international journal articles, reports, and scientific papers and has delivered numerous invited lectures worldwide. He is married and has three grown children. |
Summer School lecture by Prof John Pickett
View lecture Prof John Pickett, Rothamsted Research Abstract: In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) maize is a major crop, covering over 25 million ha, and is particularly important in resource-poor farming regions which represent a majority of the rural populations experiencing greatest poverty. Approximately 15% of this crop is lost through lepidopterous stem-boring insects, where the larvae cause extensive foliar and stem damage. In addition, over 6 million ha, ca 24% of the crop, is infested by the parasitic weed striga (Striga hermonthica). There are many options for control of striga (e.g. Vanlauwe et al., 2008), few of which have a real impact at the practical level and, of those approaches, most involve delivery through hybrid seed and modern herbicides. Use of fertilisers can obviate some of the yield loss caused by striga and irrigation can also help. However, purchasing seed (especially high value hybrid seed), herbicides, fertilisers and energy inputs necessary for irrigation are not options for most farmers because of their inability to pay, and even unwillingness to pay where erratic weather conditions prevent the guarantee of a crop being harvested. Farmers in these regions widely practise companion cropping, particularly intercropping (“kilimo cha mchanganyiko” in kiSwahili, a widespread East African language). In a collaboration led by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) based in Kenya, originally with funding from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and more recently from the Kilimo Trust, a system of exploiting both intercropping and trap cropping, the “push-pull” approach (in kiSwahili, “vuta sukuma”, or “pull-push”), has been developed to deliver stem borer and striga control in a way not only acceptable but highly beneficial to resource-poor farmers. In the “push-pull”, intercrops “push” away stem boring pests and attract beneficial insects that attack the pests, while “pull” or trap crops planted around the main crop attract away pests. Certain of the “push” crops also control the parasitic weeds. Besides the delivery of crop protection and weed control, both the intercrop and trap crops represent a valuable source of forage for both cattle and goats, particularly for smallholder milk production. Although this approach began initially in Kenya, with some regions now practising push-pull almost to saturation, the approach is rapidly expanding in other countries, including Uganda and Tanzania. In terms of overall coverage, the number of farms involved so far (40,000+) is small compared to those potentially able to benefit. However, the fact that some regions where the project has been most active have taken up push-pull so extensively indicates its wider potential and the need for understanding how such a knowledge-intensive approach, accommodating the currently resource-poor bulk of SSA farming, can be extended. Not only does this approach fit with current circumstances, but the rapid improvements in small farm economy are such that the rural community is stabilised and do not result in farms becoming larger at the expense of smallholders who would thereby be displaced from the land. The need to retain, but improve, smallholder farming was explained in detail in a speech by Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Vice President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), on 17th June 2009 at Science Forum 2009, Wageningen, The Netherlands, “Taking Advantage of Science and Partnerships To Unlock Growth in Africa’s Breadbaskets” (Adesina, 2009). Speaker Profile: Professor John A. Pickett is originally an organic chemist who has gained worldwide recognition for his investigations into volatile natural products that affect the behaviour and development of animals and other organisms (semiochemicals). He is a world authority on semiochemicals in insect behaviour and plays a leading rôle in the move away from the traditional use of wide-spectrum pesticides to more precise control through compounds targeted against specific pests at critical stages in their life cycles. Work centres on the chemical ecology of interactions between insects and between insects and their plant or animal hosts. This specifically involves the chemical characterisation of molecular structures for semiochemicals that influence the development and behaviour of insects and some other organisms. Research extends to the biochemistry and molecular biology of secondary plant metabolites that act as semiochemicals and the mechanisms by which they are employed by insects. More recently, his interests have turned to devising ways of linking genomics through novel approaches to the metabolomes of insects and their hosts. His recent practical successes include a programme for controlling stem borer pests and striga weeds in Africa, where thousands of subsistence farmers have already adopted systems for exploiting the natural product chemicals of certain companion crops. Additional information on John’s research can be found at: http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/bch/PersonalWebpage/JohnPickett.html After completing his BSc and PhD degrees at the University of Surrey and post-doctoral research at UMIST (now University of Manchester), John started his professional career with the Brewing Research Foundation and then in 1976 he moved to Rothamsted Experimental Station (now Rothamsted Research) to lead a team working on agents with behavioural activity for new methods of pest control. He was appointed Head of the Insecticides and Fungicides Department (now the Department of Biological Chemistry) in 1984, and concurrently in 2007 Scientific Director of the Rothamsted Centre for Sustainable Pest and Disease Management. In 2010, he relinquished these positions on being awarded the first Michael Elliott Distinguished Research Fellowship at Rothamsted. As well as fulfilling this prestigious new role, he continues to lead research into Chemical Ecology and is still very much personally involved with day-to-day research activities in the UK and around the world. He has over 400 publications and patents. |
Summer School lecture by Prof Marc Knight
View lecture Translation Initiative in partnership with the Global Plant Council Portuguese lecture translation Prof Marc Knight, University of Durham Abstract: In the last few decades there has been an explosion of discoveries about the senses of plants. Rooted to the spot plants are very reliant on a good information system about their environment. They need to process this complex information to make life or death decisions. How? My lab’s work has been involved mostly in how plants sense temperature and drought, and how they are able to use that information to good effect. I will describe what we have found out from this research, and the experimental approaches we are taking. I will also describe the work of other labs, who have taken very innovative approaches to unlock really fundamental questions such as “how do plants see?”.
Spanish lecture translation available at: http://www.tree.leeds.ac.uk/tree/uploads/Lectures/Translations/ProfMarcKnight_Spanish.pdf Italian lecture translation available at: http://www.tree.leeds.ac.uk/tree/uploads/Lectures/Translations/ProfMarcKnight_Italian.pdf |
Summer School lecture by Prof Toby Pennington
View lecture Prof Toby Pennington, Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh Abstract: Rain forests captured the attention of the first biologists to explore tropics, and they remain in the spotlight both of science and conservation. However, this focus neglects huge areas of the tropics that experience climates with seasonal periods of drought that are too extreme to support rain forest. The savannas and dry forests that occupy these seasonally dry areas are species-rich and highly threatened. Focusing on Latin America, this talk will examine the differences of ecology and flora that differentiate tropical rain forests, savannas and dry forests. It will evaluate evidence suggesting that the evolutionary history of the woody plant lineages that dominate these biomes may be different, and why this may matter for their conservation. Speaker Profile: Toby Pennington’s research investigates the diversity, evolutionary history and conservation of tropical forests. His work is grounded in taxonomy and floristic inventory, but uses DNA sequence data to uncover the evolutionary history of tropical plants. He specialises in the Leguminosae (pea and bean family), whose trees dominate the tropical forests of Latin America and Asia. Over the past 20 years, he has carried out fieldwork in eight Latin American countries, and most recently his focus has been on tropical savannas and dry forests. Toby is Head of the Tropical Diversity Section at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and a visiting professor at the University of Edinburgh. |
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