Alison Smith | |
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 Smith in 2016 | |
| Born | 1954 (age 69–70) [1] |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (PhD) |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Effect of anaerobiosis on plant metabolism (1978) |
| Website | www |
Alison Mary Smith (born 1954) [1] is a British biologist. She is Strategic Programme Leader at the John Innes Centre in Norwich and an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK. [4]
Smith was educated at the University of Cambridge where she was awarded a PhD in 1978 for research into the effect of anaerobiosis on plant metabolism. [5]
Smith studies the metabolism in plants of starch and sucrose – the carbohydrate products of photosynthesis that fuel plant growth. Her research has uncovered metabolic pathways responsible for the synthesis and degradation of starch granules in plants. She showed that these processes in leaves are subject to complex control by the circadian clock over the day-night cycle, ensuring the availability of carbohydrate to fuel metabolism during the night. Her focus is now on the mechanisms underlying this control, and the way in which carbohydrate availability is integrated with other sources of information to determine rates and patterns of growth and development in plants. [3] [6] [7] Smith uses information from her fundamental studies to examine starch turnover in crop plants.
Current research on starch synthesis in cereal grains has the potential to increase crop yield, and to change important functional and nutritional properties of flour. [3] Her lab is also investigating the genetic, biochemical and molecular control of starch degradation in leaves and storage organs, and how this is coordinated with plant growth, germination and sprouting. [8]
With George Coupland, Liam Dolan, Nicholas Harberd, Jonathan D. G. Jones, Cathie Martin, Robert Sablowski and Abigail Amey, Alison is a co-author of the textbook Plant Biology. [4]
Smith was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to plant biochemistry in the 2006 Birthday Honours. [2] She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016. [3]
Alison Smith is the daughter of conservation pioneer Ted Smith (1920-2015) [9] and the sister of arachnologist Dr Helen Smith. [10]
Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants for energy storage. Worldwide, it is the most common carbohydrate in human diets, and is contained in large amounts in staple foods such as wheat, potatoes, maize (corn), rice, and cassava (manioc).
Amylopectin is a water-insoluble polysaccharide and highly branched polymer of α-glucose units found in plants. It is one of the two components of starch, the other being amylose.
The John Innes Centre (JIC), located in Norwich, Norfolk, England, is an independent centre for research and training in plant and microbial science founded in 1910. It is a registered charity grant-aided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the European Research Council (ERC) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is a member of the Norwich Research Park. In 2017, the John Innes Centre was awarded a gold Athena SWAN Charter award.
Jonathan Dallas George Jones is a senior scientist at the Sainsbury Laboratory and a professor at the University of East Anglia using molecular and genetic approaches to study disease resistance in plants.
β-Amylase is an enzyme with the systematic name 4-α-D-glucan maltohydrolase. It catalyses the following reaction:
Modified starch, also called starch derivatives, is prepared by physically, enzymatically, or chemically treating native starch to change its properties. Modified starches are used in practically all starch applications, such as in food products as a thickening agent, stabilizer or emulsifier; in pharmaceuticals as a disintegrant; or as binder in coated paper. They are also used in many other applications.
In enzymology, a 4-alpha-glucanotransferase is an enzyme that catalyzes a chemical reaction that transfers a segment of a 1,4-alpha-D-glucan to a new position in an acceptor carbohydrate, which may be glucose or a 1,4-alpha-D-glucan.
Daphne J. Osborne was a British botanist. Her research in the field of plant physiology spanned five decades and resulted in over two hundred papers, twenty of which were published in Nature. Her obituary in The Times described her scientific achievements as "legendary"; that from the Botanical Society of America attributed her success to "her wonderful intellectual style, combined with her proclivity for remarkable and perceptive experimental findings".
George Michael Coupland FRS is a Scottish plant scientist, and Research Scientist and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research.
Nicholas Paul Harberd is Sibthorpian Professor of Plant Science and former head of the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
Catherine Rosemary Martin is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and project leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, co-ordinating research into the relationship between diet and health and how crops can be fortified to improve diets and address escalating chronic disease globally.
Helen Kemp Porter later Mrs Huggett was a British botanist from Imperial College London. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first female professor at Imperial College London. Her studies of polysaccharide metabolism in tobacco plants were groundbreaking; she was one of the first British scientists to use the innovative technologies of chromatography and radioactive tracers.
Frank Dickens FRS was a biochemist, best known for his work at the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry with Edward Charles Dodds on the pentose phosphate pathway which generates NADPH.
Michael Webster Bevan is a professor at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK.
Liam Dolan is a Senior Group Leader at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Sherardian Professor of Botany in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Steven M. Smith is Emeritus Professor of Plant Genetics and Biochemistry at the University of Tasmania in Australia and Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture.
Ian Alexander Graham is a professor of Biochemical Genetics in the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) at the University of York.
Andrew John McWalter Millar is a Scottish chronobiologist, systems biologist, and molecular geneticist. Millar is a professor at The University of Edinburgh and also serves as its chair of systems biology. Millar is best known for his contributions to plant circadian biology; in the Steve Kay lab, he pioneered the use of luciferase imaging to identify circadian mutants in Arabidopsis. Additionally, Millar's group has implicated the ELF4 gene in circadian control of flowering time in Arabidopsis. Millar was elected to the Royal Society in 2012 and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013.
Abigail A. Salyers was a microbiologist who pioneered the field of human microbiome research. Her work on the bacterial phylum Bacteroidetes and its ecology led to a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. At a time where the prevailing paradigm was focused on E. coli as a model organism, Salyers emphasized the importance of investigating the breadth of microbial diversity. She was one of the first to conceptualize the human body as a microbial ecosystem. Over the course of her 40-year career, she was presented with numerous awards for teaching and research and an honorary degree from ETH Zurich, and served as president of the American Society for Microbiology.
The Rank Prizes comprise the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics and the Rank Prize for Nutrition. The prizes recognise, reward and encourage researchers working in the respective fields of optoelectronics and nutrition.
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