Profile

I’ve lived and worked in Norwich for the last 17 years or so, it’s a great place to live and the John Innes is a great place to do SCIENCE. I grew up in Oxfordshire, and studied in Bath and Oxford before moving to Norwich with my wife Sarah.

I really enjoy brewing beer, it requires a lot of precision and the science of brewing is very interesting. Some of the science of plant metabolism I have studied and worked on in the past is relevant to the brewing, so it’s great to be able to use that knowledge in my hobbies. It’s great when it comes out tasting good too.

A bottle of home brewed beer together with a home made microelectronic control unit to monitor the brewing process

I love cycling. I like to get about on my bike as it saves using a car, keeps me (relatively) fit and gets me outdoors. I think the world would be a better place if people used their cars less and everyone would be happier if they rode their bikes more.

We’ve got three chickens that live in the garden, we had more in the past. They’re all named after lifeboats (Sarah is a lifeboat enthusiast). I sell their eggs to my colleagues at work when we have more than we can eat. We also have 2 cats (Beryl and Jack).

my cat jack doing an impression of the apollo 11 moon lander

I spend some time with my dad working on his latest creations. Mum and Dad live nearby, and Dad is a little disabled so needs some help. He likes to make abstract sculptures that move in the wind, and I help him.

I really enjoy doing science as a job. The John Innes Centre is a great place full of very interesting people. It’s hard work and sometimes stressful, but it’s extremely satisfying to make new discoveries and work with some very smart people.

In 2008 I got involved in a new project called “I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out of Here!” that was just starting out, and it was great fun. So 15 years later I’ve come back for another try, and wow it’s grown so much!

Aphids, and other sap-sucking insects are like mosquitos of the plant world. They have specialised mouthparts that act like piercing straws that they can poke into the plant and suck out the nutritious sap from the plant’s veins, just like how a mosquito feeds on your blood. Also like mosquitos they carry diseases, especially viruses that they spread from plant to plant, and these cause a big problem for farmers.

A family of aphids, Myzus persicae. They are clones of each other.

Plants have an immune system, that helps to protect them from infection by diseases and also from insects like aphids. Plants can sense when they are under attack and can respond by making poisonous chemicals, or by growing thorns, or even by producing smells that can attract carnivorous insects that eat the aphids. We are interested in finding out how the aphids can avoid this immune system.

Green peach aphids (Myzus persicae) you can see one of them feeding from the plant sap using her long sucking mouthparts

When the aphids feed they are very stealthy, the mouthparts move through the leaf and do very little damage except for sucking out the sap. Also they release saliva into the plant, and this contains chemicals that stop the plant from activating it’s immune system, so the aphids can carry on feeding without being poisoned or eaten. We are working on finding out exactly how this all works.

We use different methods to approach this question. We have been sequencing the genomes of aphids, and also other sap-sucking insects including the spittlebugs that make cuckoo spit (ask me about cuckoo spit, it’s cool and disgusting). This involves extracting the DNA from the insects, reading it out on DNA-sequencing machines, and stitching all the sequence data together with computers. Also we do biochemical analysis to find what are the proteins in the aphid saliva, and what these proteins do to the plants.

Cuckoo spit. Nothing to do with cuckoos. Inside the foam is a baby spittlebug sucking the sap from the plant.

I work as part of a research group run by Prof Saskia Hogenhout. I am a research assistant, and spend most of my time doing research in the lab. I also spend some of my time helping the PhD and Masters students in the lab and helping to train them in lab methods. I also keep the lab running, making sure we have the supplies we need and we are working safely.

Saskia Hogenhout’s research group out in norwich at Christmas time last year

Me and other members of the lab in the field looking for spittlebugs

My typical day is mostly taken up with doing experiments in the lab. Most of this is molecular biology and biochemistry. Although it is all quite complicated, it mostly involves moving very small volumes of liquid from one place to another, and mixing them, heating them and cooling them, and spinning them round very very fast.

A lot of experiments involve working with plants, this might be putting DNA into them to make them do new things, feeding them to aphids to see if the aphids like them, or grinding them up into a powder to extract the DNA or proteins.

As well as working with the rest of the team in Saskia’s group, I also spend time working with staff from the many support services we have at the John Innes Centre. This includes the teams that grow all our plants for us in horticultural services, the Insectary staff who look after all the insects we keep, the lab support team who prepare chemicals for us, and also do the washing up for us (we are very lucky to have them) and also the teams that look after and run some of the sophisticated technology like the microscopes and mass spectrometers.

There’s also a lot of time spent at the computer analysing data and planning experiments. There’s a lot of reading to do to keep up with the research published by other research groups. We have lab meetings to discuss our current work every week. There is also some admin work, a lot of emails, committee meetings, and ordering supplies for the lab.

There’s socialising in the canteen over lunch or at tea time. Also we have a bar at work, which opens on Friday evenings so there’s a chance for a beer and a chat before the weekend. We’re also lucky to have a swimming pool, and squash courts and there’s lots of sport and social clubs.