In plants, the circadian clock is vital for measuring day length and aligning development with the changing seasons. Circadian gene regulation has been associated with many important agronomic traits including flowering time, dormancy, water use efficiency, nitrogen metabolism and vegetative yield. Recent work also points toward a close involvement with stress and plant/pathogen interactions and the clock. My project aims to develop the tools and resources to investigate the role and function of the clock in important crop species. Specifically, I am collecting high-throughput measurements of circadian rhythms and using a range of approaches to investigate Arabidopsis clock gene homologues. I will also collaborate with colleagues at the John Innes Centre to assess agronomic traits of clock mutants in field experiments.
Previously I completed a PhD at the John Innes Centre where I investigated the impact of climate change on vernalization. I also developed a single molecule RNA FISH (smFISH) method for plants and used it to explore sense/antisense transcription at the cellular level. During a previous post doc I used smFISH and Golden Gate Cloning approaches to test hypotheses generated from mathematical models.
