In 1985 our History of Genetics Library gained a new book; a duplicate copy of the first edition of William Bateson’s ‘Mendel’s Principles of Heredity: A Defence’, three decades on, we’d like to take this treasure down from the shelves and open it up to a wider audience, explaining why it is so special, and to invite readers to examine the pages for themselves

The short answer is that plants look green to us, because red light is the most useful wavelength for them. The longer answer lies in the details of photosynthesis, the electromagnetic spectrum, energy and “special pairs” of chlorophyll molecules in each plant cell

Last week we gave you the perspective of one of our most recent Group Leaders. This week, we have one of our more experienced; Professor Robert Sablowski on what it takes to be a Group Leader at a world-leading plant and microbial research institute

As we recruit the next generation of Group Leaders here at the John Innes Centre, we sat down with one of our most recent, Dr Laila Moubayidin, to find out why she became a scientist and how she went from PhD to Postdoc and on to leading her own lab

Every year at the John Innes Centre we welcome hundreds of scientists from around the world, who are just beginning their plant or microbial research careers. We sat down with one of them, Agamemnon Soutas, to ask about his experiences on the course, what has he learned and where does he want to take his plant science career from here?

Reflecting on the ‘culture of commemoration’- how history of science is re-told and why ‘discovery narratives’ of the kind that surround Mendel are promoted

Behind every scientist, is a team of people working behind the scenes to help enable the research to continue. We sit down with Becky Owen from our computing team, to ask if turning it off and on again really does work?

Detailed exploration of ant nests in the thorny acacia trees in Kenya have revealed a new species of bacteria called, Streptomyces formicae KY5

We sat down with Crop Transformation's Mark Smedley to chat about his work on genetic crop transformation and Crispr/Cas genome editing, as well as training the next generation and how he became a scientist