MGRC seminar Part I: John Innes Centre (JIC)

An introduction of John Innes Centre (JIC) is given by Prof. Chris Lamb, the director of JIC. JIC founded in 1910 at the bequest of John Innes. Most of the funding comes from BBSRC and only a small portion comes from the industry and charity. The JIC sites include JIC, The Genome Analysis Center (which is newly established), Sainsbury Laboratory, The Norwich BioIncubator and Plant Biosciences Ltd.

One of the centre’s goals is to understand science and use that information to benefit the society. JIC’s main strength is excellency in fundamental research of plant sciences and microbiology. Out of ~800 members, there 17 % PhD students.

Most major crop production has declined compared to 1964-1994. Rice, maize, canola and wheat fall in that category. Therefore, JIC’s research is focusing on wheat, canola and a bit of work on rice .

The centre has identified several Grand Challenges:
1. Science for enchanced breeding
2. Adapting to climate change
3. reduced footprint, input, ghg
4. enhancing yield, yield resilience
5. output trials
6. Delivery mechanism
7. (missing in my note)

One of their researches on transgenic plants received a lot of attentions lately. Their team has produced purple tomatoes by transferring two genes from snapdragon that can increase production of anthocyanin. Increase level of this antioxidant caused the observed colour change. Findings showed that anthocyanins can significantly reduce the growth of colon cancer cells. Feeding of purple tomatoes to mutant mice prone to cancer can prolong the mice’s lifespan. Here’s how it looks like:
This presentation will be posted up soon on http://www.mgrc.com.my as part of MGRC eminent speaker series.