Spencer et al review on lycophyte evo-devo out

Really proud of my postdoc Vicky and PhD student Zoe for getting this review finished off during our lockdown...  We hope to see use of lycophytes as evo-devo models expanding further, as many great questions about their biology and evolution are still open.

Paper correction out

I'm very grateful to Zoe Nemec Venza, Joe Cammarata and Wei Liu for identifying and resolving some problems with the CRISPR lines we published in our Whitewoods et al. (2018) paper on the innovation of 3D growth in land plants. Their work has lead to the publication of a correction to the original paper which you can read here, and we are hoping that there will be a couple more papers from Zoe and Joe building on the original paper soon!

New paper out: The monophyletic bryophyte group underwent reductive evolution of stomata

Another paper from a collaboration that I have greatly enjoyed. The first author Brogan Harris' first paper and my first paper with all Bristol people, led by Tom Williams. It looks at how stomata evolved in the land plants using phylogenetics and phylogenomics. You can read the paper here.

New paper out: Anthoceros genomes

Many congrats to Fay-wei Li and Péter Szövényi for completing their Anthoceros genome efforts, and thanks for generously recognising my tiny contribution :-). You can read the paper in Nature Plants here.

New Paper out: Positional cues in Marchantia organogenesis

Have greatly enjoyed working with the Kyoto Marchantia team and Masaki Shimamura on a clonal analysis of Marchantia dorsal organ development. You can read the paper here.

Lady Emily Smyth MRes studentships open for application at Bristol

The Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation

The Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation (BCAI) was established in 2003 to support cutting edge agricultural research through funding from the Lady Emily Smyth Trust. BCAI provides financial assistance to University of Bristol academic and research staff to promote and support agricultural research, usually by pump-priming or follow-on funding. BCAI also provides start-up funding to successful independent fellowship applicants to Bristol. 

The studentship

A new flagship scheme for BCAI, the Lady Emily Smyth Studentship is a prestigious award to support two outstanding scholars undertaking Masters by Research at the University of Bristol within the plant and agricultural research theme. The fully funded award covers the full cost of fees, stipend, consumables for a year, and a supplement to support dissemination.

Award

Fee £4300

Stipend (BBSRC level) £14,777

Consumables £4000

Dissemination support £500

Applications

UK and EU students are eligible to apply for this award using the University of Bristol's postgraduate application form here. Students should indicate their preferred supervisor and that they wish to be considered for the Lady Emily Smyth Studentship. The closing date for applications is 17th April 2020. Supervisors will be asked to nominate their preferred candidate for the award and applications will be ranked by committee prior to interviews, which will be held in the week starting on the 4th May 2020.

Projects for 2020 admission

A full list of projects is listed on the BCAI website here.