I have a PhD in Plant Science and MSc in Bioinformatics. I used to lead a grass cell wall research group at Rothamsted Research UK and now work as a consultant. Some recent research outputs are highlighted below; for full list of my publications see Google Scholar.
A natural wheat gene variant for healthier bread
As part of a programme at Rothamsted Research and John Innes Centre (UK) to genetically improve wheat to improve dietary fibre content of wheat foods, I identified a candidate gene variant for conferring better dietary fibre. We were able to show that this variant does indeed cause higher soluble dietary fibre content and how it does it. It can now be included in all new wheat varieties to improve nutritional value of wheat foods.
universal_grass_peps
universal_grass_peps is a new database I developed containing grass genes identified as likely common function in all grasses (universal) and categorised as likely of monocot- or commelinid- or grass-specific function
13,312 groups of universal grass genes
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395 monocot specific
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1,412 commelinid specific
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2,805 grass specific
Other projects aimed at new crop varieties arising from my gene discovery.
low viscosity wheat
Novel wheat designed to have low extract viscosity for improved alcohol production. Photo shows plots of this low viscosity wheat and control lines growing in UK , courtesy of Limagrain UK.
novel sugar cane
Sugar cane with suppression of a single gene to improve digestibility of residue for biofuel. Photo shows sugarcane BAHD01 RNAi lines and controls growing in Brasilia, Brazil, courtesy of EMBRAPA-AgroEnergy.