Dr Guy Polturak is a postdoctoral scientist, spending his days hunting through gene clusters for the genes involved in specific biosynthetic pathways

PhD student Kathy Stratton, works with Dr Susan Schlimpert on understanding Streptomyces venezualae and specifically how cell division in Streptomyces is controlled in response to DNA damage. We asked Kathy, what are microbes, why are they interesting and where do you find them?

As a plant and microbial research institute, we have hundreds of biologists on-site and it struck us that while almost all of them had a biology career, none of those careers looked the same

Dr Andrew Lucy joined the John Innes as a technician in 1987, by the time he left he had earned a PhD, discovered science to be exhilarating, fun and populated by amazing people and become Dr Lucy. This is his incredible story

Since the creation of our alumni network earlier this year, we have enjoyed hearing the stories of a huge variety of people who have passed from our institute over the years. One of those people is Dr Kathy Faulkner, who has moved from the lab to the classroom

Last month we were proud to announce that PhD student Anna Backhaus, was the recipient of a prestigious Women in Triticum (WIT) award. Here, Anna reflects on the award and an interrupted but still memorable trip to Mexico – and offers some advice for colleagues

Matthew Johnston is a Phd student in the Dr Christine Faulkner lab. His research focuses on cell-to-cell communication in plants, so we asked Matt, how and why do cells communicate?

We caught up with former John Innes Centre PhD student and Postdoc Tom van den Boogaart to see where his career has taken him so far and find out what advice he would give to scientists considering the same

Faced by climate change, and our ever-increasing agricultural demands, what can we do to improve crops being grown? Liz Chapman is working on improving wheat yields by investigating the length of time the crops stay green