Plant biologist who is interested in the evolution of photosynthesis, with a particular focus on the C4 pathway which allows increased productivity, water use and nitrogen use efficiency. Plants using the C4 pathway dominate open habitats in the tropics and sub-tropics.
Research Area
My research focusses on how C4 plants have evolved repeatedly from the ancestral C3 pathway. Plants have evolved in more than sixty lineages of land plants. They are now amongst the most productive native vegetation on the planet, include some of our most important crops, and the changes to leaves associated with the C4 pathway increase water and nitrogen use efficiencies. How C4 photosynthesis evolved so many times has long been a conundrum because it is highly complex, demanding changes to leaf anatomy, cell development and photosynthetic biochemistry.
We have provided a new conceptual framework for how C4 plants evolved by comparative analysis of molecular changes in genera that contain C3 and C4 species as well as so-called C3-C4 intermediates that comprise species that possess some C3 and C4 characteristics. To validate the impact of changes to genes that we hypothesise are important for evolution of the C4 system, we test function in C3 species and in so doing develop models that predict how the complex C4 phenotype has evolved so many times.
Project Interests
I am interested to support the development of projects that make use of genera containing C3, C3-C4 and C4 species. Specifically, this will allow hypotheses relating to how and why traits associated with the C4 pathway evolve. This can involve analysis of multiple lineages, and advanced sequencing technologies, but also functional testing of these hypotheses in C3 species to test which genes control the emergence of C4 traits, and the impact of these genetic switches on plant physiology, phenotype and growth under environments associated with C4 plants.