| title | layout | description |
|---|---|---|
Members | Hibberd Lab |
page |
Hibberd Lab members past and present |
{% include JB/setup %}
Julian established his laboratory in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge in 2001. Since then, nineteen post- doctoral researchers, nineteen PhD students, and five research assistants have been part of the lab. The group is currently seventeen-strong. Read more about them below.
Julian did his PhD with John Farrar and Bob Whitbread at Bangor University. He then moved to post-doctoral positions with Julie Scholes, Paul Quick and Malcolm Press in Sheffield, and then John Gray in Cambridge. He started his own group in Cambridge while holding a BBSRC Sir David Phillips Fellowship. His interests in plant biology have focussed on various aspects of photosynthesis.
Julian has more recently become interested in using natural variation to improve our understanding of complex traits. He is a team leader within both the C4 Rice Project, and represents the photosynthesis and metabolism community on the Plant Section committee of the Society of Experimental Biology. He is also an Associate Editor of Plant Physiology, and from 2011-2014 was a member of the BBSRC Responsive Mode Grants panel.
Lei got his PhD in Crop Genetics and Breeding at China Agricultural University in 2015, during his PhD study, he identified and characterized a domestication gene controlling long and barbed awns from the progenitor of cultivated rice, common wild rice (Oryza rufipogon). Lei joined Hibberd lab in 2016; he is investigating the regulatory mechanisms of cell-specific gene expression in C3 leaves.
Sherif joined the Hibberd lab as a postdoc in January 2016 where he is currently working on the C4 Rice Project. He is using his past experience to shed light on the transcriptional regulation of chloroplast biogenesis, by performing cell type-specific analyses comparing mesophyll and bundle sheath cells. He did his PhD in Rob White’s lab at the University of Cambridge where he worked on the Drosophila spermatogenesis cell differentiation pathway and developed an experimental framework for genome-wide epigenetic profiling of individual cell stages of the Drosophila male germline.
Haiyan got her PhD in 2014 from the Department of Plant Genetics and Breeding in China Agriculture University (CAU) at Prof. Zichao Li’ laboratory and then she started a postdoc research under supervision of Prof. Yan Guo at the same university. During her work in CAU, she focused on characterization of drought-resistance genes in upland rice. In October 2016, Haiyan joined the Hibberd lab, and is currently investigating the regulatory mechanism of light stress response in rice bundle sheath cells.
Pallavi did a PhD in 2015 at National Institute of Plant Genome Research, India. She worked on investigating the role of Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) signaling networks in imparting flooding tolerance in rice. In October 2015, she moved as a post- doctoral associate to Cornell University, US, where her research interests focused on the interaction of rice with its bacterial pathogen Xanthomonas and the role of transcription activator-like (TAL) effector proteins facilitating this interplay. In 2017 she started a post-doctoral position at the University of Cambridge, and is currently working on elucidating the spectrum of regulatory networks governing the evolution of C4 photosynthesis.
Sean got his PhD from the University of Leeds where he studied abscisic acid (ABA) signalling in the model bryophyte Physcomitrella patens. This work identified a novel ABA regulator that was likely important in plant's conquest of land. After leaving the north for warmer climes, Sean joined the Hibberd lab at the start of 2017. He will be using another bryophyte model (Marchantia this time) to study light signalling and regulation and how this is integrated in early plant development and photosynthesis.
Natasha's aim is to understand the assembly of the photosynthetic apparatus and then manipulate it to induce chloroplast development in cells that are not normally green with the overarching aim to increase photosynthetic efficiency and crop productivity. Studies in Arabidopsis thaliana provide good understanding of how photosynthetic apparatus in assembled, however, this knowledge is not easily translated into grasses (including a staple monocot crop, rice). This is due to a number of whole genome duplication events and a whole genome triplication event that separate grasses from Arabidopsis. She is using a liverwort, Marchantia polymorpha, which, due to a low complexity of its genome, is an excellent tool to gain understanding of the basic ancestral pathways of the photosynthetic machinery development enabling translation of this knowledge into monocot crops.
Lee got her PhD in 2020 from the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. During her PhD, she identified a role for auxin and auxin-related genes during the plant response to the ionic component of salinity stress. Lee joined the Hibberd lab in March 2020. Here she will be working to identify and characterise master transcriptional regulators of photosynthesis in rice and analyse the transcriptional changes in maize bundle sheath and mesophyll cells during growth in photoinhibitory conditions.
Patrick did his PhD with Phil Wigge at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University working on how plants sense temperature and how temperature is integrated with other environmental signals to control adaptive responses in Arabidopsis. This work found a role for chloroplast signalling in controlling diurnal patterns of thermotolerance. Since moving across Cambridge to the Hibberd lab in summer 2017, Patrick is working on how cell-type sepcific expression is controlled in Arabidopsis and how large increases in the expression of genes required for C4 photosynthesis have evolved using Arabidopsis and the C4 model species Gynandropsis gynandra.
Leonie did her PhD with Professor Giles Oldroyd at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, where she investigated the downstream transcriptional targets of three GRAS-domain transcription factors required for the establishment of the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis in the model legume Medicago truncatula. Her work identified a lipid biosynthesis pathway that is upregulated in root cells colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and provides the obligate biotrophic fungus with fatty acids as a major carbon source. In November 2017, Leonie joined the Hibberd lab as a postdoctoral scientist. Her research focuses on understanding the cell type specific regulation of photosynthetic capacity in rice leaves.
Kumari got her PhD in December 2018 from Heinrich Heine University, Germany. She had performed EMS mutagenesis and activation tagging screens in Arabidopsis thaliana and had analysed comparative transcriptomics of leaf developmental gradients from C3 and C4 Flaveria species to identify novel genes that determine C4 leaf anatomy. She then continued in the same group as a postdoctoral researcher until the end of 2019. In April 2020, she has joined the Hibberd’s group as a research associate to investigate how chloroplasts biogenesis is regulated by cell division patterns in rice (Oryza sativa) bundle sheath cells.
Tina did her PhD in plant biochemistry at ETH Zurich, and her main research interest lies in plant metabolism and photosynthesis. She joined the lab of Julian Hibberd in October 2018 as a Swiss National Science Foundation Research Fellow, studying cell-to-cell connectivity in leaves of the Cleome family and how this trait might have facilitated the evolution of C4 photosynthesis. During her PhD in the lab of Professor Sam Zeeman, she discovered two chloroplast proteins that were originally thought to act as enzymes play other important non-canonical roles. This includes the plastidial NAD-dependent malate dehydrogenase, where the protein but not the enzymatic activity is required for proper chloroplast development. After her PhD, she worked at the John Innes Centre in the group of Professor Alison Smith, studying transgenic wheat lines with altered carbohydrate metabolism in the grain.
Greg has a BSc in Genetics and MSc in Horticulture both from New Mexico State University where he studied the inheritance of disease resistance and spicy flavour in chilli peppers. He discovered a new gene that inhibits disease resistance, helped sequence the chilli pepper genome and developed one of the hottest peppers in the world. Additionally, he helped identify novel genes involved in photosynthesis from large-scale mutant screening in green algae at the Carnegie Institute for Science, Stanford. At Cambridge, he completed his PhD investigating the genetic basis for C4 photosynthesis from natural variation among C4 plants and traditional gene mapping approaches to identify which genes are involved in developing the C4 pathway.
Zhengao got a BSc in Chemistry from Nankai University, China, in 2016. After graduation, he took an intern in Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology & Ecology for 6 months investigating the functional targets of secondary metabolites by chemical proteomics. Zhengao joined the Hibberd lab in Sep 2017 as a PhD student. He is now studying how modifications to the spatial organisation of metabolic pathways can be used to manipulate their efficiency in two complementary strands of research. In the first, he aims to better understand how assembly of synthetic protein scaffolds affects pathway efficiency in plants. In the second, he aims to increase the distance between enzymes of photosynthesis by engineering a synthetic C4 cycle in leaves of C3 A. thaliana.
Conor is a BBSRC DTP student. He graduated with an MSci from the University of Nottingham. For his masters project at Nottingham he worked on the N-end rule pathway of programmed protein degradation. Currently, through exploiting the natural variation in the C4 species Gynanropsis gynandra, Conor is using specific breeding methods in conjunction with quantitative genetics to calculate the heritability and number of genes responsible for certain C4 characteristics. Additionally, with the aim of identifying loci responsible for complex C4 phenotypes, such as Kranz anatomy, he is using quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis to generate a high-density genetic map in G. gynandra.
Jessica is currently on the placement year of her Molecular and Cellular Biology integrated MSci from the University of Glasgow. She Joined the lab in September of 2019 to work with Dr Leonie Luginbuehl on elucidation of the gene regulatory mechanisms underlying cell type specific gene expression in C3 species.
Susan is in charge of keeping the lab running! She has been instrumental in developing the transformation pipeline that we use for Gynandropsis gynandra. She is also responsible for plant and seed stock maintenance, ordering lab stocks, and time permiting, helps with specific research projects in the lab. She joined the lab in 2000 after having worked in Industry.
Na did her MSc in Plant Genetics and Breeding at CAU (China Agricultural University), then she went to Biotech center of Beijing Da Bei Nong Technology Group Co. Ltd., she got 5 year rich experience of cereal genetic transformation there. She joined the Hibberd lab in 2017 as a research technician.
Ruth has a PhD in Plant Biochemistry from the University of Warwick where she studied the targeting of chloroplast proteins into the thylakoid membrane and found that multiple pathways exist. She then went to a postdoctoral post at the University of Auckland, before coming to Plant Sciences Cambridge work on the import, assembly and turn-over of chloroplast proteins in John Gray’s lab, and then as a Royal Society Research Fellow. Since then she has worked at Biogemma on useful oil production in oilseed rape and screening of wheat cultivars for marker-gene trait associations, and has also worked for Syngene. She returned to Plant Sciences in May 2017, joining the Hibberd lab to work on crop transformation.
Anoop did his MSc in Biochemistry at University of Lucknow, India. Then he worked as Senior Research Fellow at National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (ICAR-NBPGR), New Delhi, India, where his research focused on understanding the gene regulatory networks in cereal crops. He joined the Hibberd lab as a Senior Research Technician in January 2020 and is currently working on grafting and somatic hybridisation.
#### Former Post-Doctoral Research Associates
#### Former Research Staff