Circadian clocks

Biography

Nicky completed her PhD at the University of Pretoria in 2014 focused on the molecular genetics of cellulose synthase regulation during wood formation, under the supervision of Prof Zander Myburg. After this Nicky’s focus shifted to sunflower circadian rhythms and flower physiology when she joined the Harmer lab at UC Davis. This research focused on the interaction between environment and the circadian clock to co-ordinate pollinator visits and anthesis. Nicky took up a faculty position at the University of Pretoria in 2019, where the team focuses on understanding the environmental factors influencing the floral biology of crop species.

Biography

Luíza Lane de Barros Dantas is from Brazil, and currently holds a position in the UK, at the John Innes Centre. Her research interests gravitate around the understanding of plants and how they tell time in natural environments. During her PhD, she has studied different aspects of circadian regulation of a polyploid crop (sugarcane) in field conditions, from cross-organ transcriptome rhythms and temperature-dependent alternative splicing patterns to the role of field microenvironments on crop metabolism and transcript rhythms. During her postdoc she studied how the fluctuating environment influences Arabidopsis circadian oscillator, as well as the circadian regulation on carbon metabolism.

Biography

Manas conducts research in wild crop relatives of rice and barley to identify novel traits, map the causal loci/gene and transfer to enrich cultivated gene pool. He undertook a PhD from International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, and University of the Philippines Los banos, where he worked on rice trait improvement for salt tolerance utilizing a halophyte wild rice Oryza coarctata. Later he joined Agricultural Research Organisation, Israel and worked on barley germplasm to find loci having circadian clock plasticity. Also works on recombining the wild genetic introgression for precise mapping of circadian allele with crisper assisted genome editing.