John Innes Centre

John Innes scientist at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures

15th December 2009

Forty years after she sat in the audience at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, Professor Cathie Martin of the John Innes Centre was on the famous stage as a guest of this year’s lecturer.  The RI Christmas Lectures, supported by Microsoft Research, are demonstration-packed, fun-filled science events for young people, broadcast on television every Christmas and have formed part of the Christmas tradition for generations.
 
“I made the trip to the lectures when I was considering going to university and starting a career in science.  I had always been interested in the natural world and experimenting, and the lectures really brought across how exciting science could be,” said Prof Martin.  “I was delighted to get the chance to appear in the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures this year and to help get across to today’s youngsters the excitement of science.”

This year’s series of lectures are presented by Prof Sue Hartley and explore the 300 million year history of plants’ interactions with animals.   Cathie Martin appeared in the fourth lecture, bringing along her purple tomatoes.  These tomatoes have been genetically modified to increase the levels of anthocyanins, naturally occurring plant pigments that have health-protecting roles. 

“We are completely dependant on plants for the food that we eat and the air that we breathe.  I wanted to show the contributions scientists can make in improving the availability of healthy foods, as an example of how science can improve our general quality of life,” said Cathie.  Cathie Martin leads a research group at the John Innes Centre, an institute of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Over the series of five lectures Sue Hartley traced the history of the relationship between plants and animals over 300 million years, during which plants have developed many terrifying and devious ways to defend themselves and attack their enemies. Vicious poisons, lethal materials and even cunning forms of communicating with unlikely allies are just some of the weapons in their armoury. Using these and other tactics, plants have seen off everything from dinosaurs to caterpillars.

In the 2009 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, to be shown on More 4 at 7pm in the week leading up to Christmas (21 - 25 December),Prof Sue Hartley will show you plants as you've never seen them before.  They are complicated, cunning, beautiful and with plenty of tricks up their sleeve. And what's more, we humans are dependent on them in ways you'd never imagine. As well as much of our food, our drugs, medicines and materials are all by-products of this epic 300 million year war.

http://www.rigb.org/

Contacts:

JIC Press Office:
Andrew Chapple, Tel: 01603 251490, email: andrew.chapple@bbsrc.ac.uk
Zoe Dunford, Tel: 01603 255111, email: zoe.dunford@bbsrc.ac.uk


Notes to editors:

The John Innes Centre, www.jic.ac.uk, is an independent, world-leading research centre in plant and microbial sciences with over 800 staff. JIC is based on Norwich Research Park and carries out high quality fundamental, strategic and applied research to understand how plants and microbes work at the molecular, cellular and genetic levels. The JIC also trains scientists and students, collaborates with many other research laboratories and communicates its science to end-users and the general public. The JIC is grant-aided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council