• Peter Shaw's Research

Related links

• AT JIC:
• Cell & Developmental Biology
• Arabidopsis Nucleolar Protein Database
• Wheat Endosperm RNA in situ Image Database

Curriculum Vitae

• 1972 B.A. University of Cambridge
• 1976 PhD. Department of Biochemistry, University of Bristol
• 1975-1976 Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Biochemistry, University of Birmingham
• 1976-1979 Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Biochemistry, University of Bristol
• 1979 - present Project Leader, John Innes Centre
• 1987 Visiting Research Fellow, University of California, San Francisco, USA
• 2001-present Associate Head of Cell and Developmental Biology Department, John Innes Centre, UK
• 2002-present Honorary Professor. University of East Anglia, UK

Peter Shaw

Associate Head of Department

Cell & Developmental Biology

Contact details

peter.shaw@jic.ac.uk

Research interests

Organization of interphase chromosomes and transcription. we are investigating the organization of interphase chromosome territories, how transcription is related to and regulated by this organization. For these studies we are using wheat, because of its large nuclei, relatively good cytology and importance as a crop plant, and Arabidopsis because of its excellent genetic and genomic resources.

Organization of the nucleolus. in a collaborative project with John Brown (Scottish Crop Research Institute, Dundee) we are analysing the nucleolar proteome and 'RNA'ome. This has indicated that the nucleolus is involved in more functions than ribosome biogenesis, including mRNA surveillance and nonsense mediated degradation. Database available at: http://bioinf.scri.sari.ac.uk/cgi-bin/atnopdb/home

Nuclear Cajal bodies. Cajal bodies (formerly called coiled bodies) are sub-nuclear organelles present in both plants and animals. They are involved in small nuclear and nucleolar RNA metabolism and probably also have other functions. using GFP, we have shown that they are mobile, dynamic structures within plant cells. In collaboration with Liam Dolan, we are taking a genetic approach to defining their function and assembly in Arabidopsis.

Homologue pairing in meiosis. in an ongoing collaborative project with Graham Moore's group (JIC, Crop Genetics) we are investigating the mechanism of meiotic homologue recognition and pairing in Arabidopsis and wheat. An important focus in wheat is the analysis of the mechanism of the Ph1 locus, which controls specificity of homologue pairing in wheat, and which involves centromere behaviour.