Understanding and Exploiting Plant and Microbial Metabolism

Our research themes

Primary Metabolism

Research in this theme concerns the major food reserves of plants and bacteria: starch, sugars, storage proteins and lipids in plants and glycogen in bacteria. In addition to their central importance in the carbon and nitrogen economies of plants and bacteria, these abundant reserves are the basis of the human diet and raw materials for a wide range of industries.

We aim to understand how plants and bacteria store and mobilise these reserves, and how their amounts and properties can be manipulated to enhance their value as food or industrial materials.

Plant-derived Natural Products

Plants are impressive sources of metabolic diversity and conservative estimates predict that the Kingdom is likely to be capable of producing over 500,000 different compounds.

Natural products have important ecological functions in crop plants as protectants against biotic and abiotic stresses and in attraction of pollinators and seed dispersal agents. They also determine important crop traits such as disease resistance, colour, flavour, taste and nutritional content. Moreover, plant-derived natural products have a wide variety of commercial uses as drugs, medicines, foods, fragrances, pesticides, colourants, flavours and phytonutrients.

In this theme we seek to improve our understanding of the synthesis and function of plant-derived natural products, the mechanisms underpinning metabolic diversification and the relationship between primary and secondary metabolic pathways (evolutionary origins, regulation and partitioning), all of which will be critical for crop improvement, for the discovery of new bioactives, enzymes and pathways, and for the development of bio-based industries.

Antibiotics and other Microbial Natural Products

Bacteria, and in particular actinomycetes, are prolific sources of anti-infectives, anti-cancer agents, immuno-suppressants and herbicides. Our ultimate aim is to generate novel natural products by genetically manipulating these organisms and by exploiting their untapped biosynthetic potential. We are adopting a multi-disciplinary approach to discover and manipulate gene clusters for natural product biosynthesis in actinomycetes that will enable knowledge–based strategies for the development of new therapeutic agents, particularly new antibiotics.


Streptomyces cinnamoneus, the producer of cinnamycin	Streptomyces coelicolor

Biomolecular Assembly - Exploiting Nature's Tool Kit

Nature has taken millennia to evolve the exquisite architectures and processes that current biological systems depend upon. Given the fine control of structure and dynamics afforded across length scales ranging from the nano to the organismal, this theme aims to understand, manipulate and exploit nature’s tool kit in the development of natural and bio-inspired materials, catalysts and sensors for research use and for potential commercial application. It capitalises on the wealth of leading fundamental plant and microbial science research across the JIC, developing a set of tools and techniques that will underpin this and other JIC Programmes. The translational nature of the research provides a vehicle for engagement with the wider academic community, nationally and internationally, and with industry.

Fundamental Cellular Processes

We aim to understand fundamental cellular processes at the molecular level to inform the more strategic elements of our programme.

Detailed analysis of important biological processes in prokaryotes, such as transcriptional regulation, control of DNA topology, morphological differentiation and membrane transport, provide paradigms for related plant and microbial research across the Centre.

The outputs of this research may provide important targets for pharmaceutical, agricultural or industrial exploitation.