Malcolm J. Bennett

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Malcolm Bennett, a Fellow of the Royal Society, is Professor of Plant Science at the University of Nottingham. [1]

Contents

Education and career

He obtained his BSc in biochemistry with Molecular Biology from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1985 His PhD was from the University of Warwick in 1989. Bennett has held a number of prestigious fellowships including a BBSRC Professorial Research Fellowship, [2] a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Fellowship [3] and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellowship. In 2020 he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society. [4]

Bennett's research is focused on the ’hidden half of plants,’ exploring how roots grow, develop and adapt to their soil environment. His group has characterised many of the regulatory signals, genes and molecular mechanisms that control root growth and developmental responses. Bennett is co-director of the Hounsfield Facility which uses X-ray based microCT to non-invasively image roots in soil.

Bennett has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals. [5]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Root Basal organ of a vascular plant

In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the surface of the soil, but roots can also be aerial or aerating, that is, growing up above the ground or especially above water.

Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

The Department of Plant Sciences is a department of the University of Cambridge that conducts research and teaching in plant sciences. It was established in 1904, although the university has had a professor of botany since 1724.

Hydrotropism

Hydrotropism is a plant's growth response in which the direction of growth is determined by a stimulus or gradient in water concentration. A common example is a plant root growing in humid air bending toward a higher relative humidity level.

Babraham Institute Life sciences research institution

The Babraham Institute is a life sciences research institution and a partner organisation of the University of Cambridge. The Babraham Institute is based on the Babraham Research Campus, partly occupying a former manor house, but also laboratory and science facility buildings on the campus, surrounded by an extensive parkland estate, just south of Cambridge, England. It is an independent and charitable organization which is involved in biomedical research, including healthy aging and molecular biology. The director is Dr Simon Cook who also leads the Institute's signalling research programme.

Rhizosphere Region of soil or substrate comprising the root microbiome

The rhizosphere is the narrow region of soil or substrate that is directly influenced by root secretions and associated soil microorganisms known as the root microbiome. The rhizosphere involving the soil pores contains many bacteria and other microorganisms that feed on sloughed-off plant cells, termed rhizodeposition, and the proteins and sugars released by roots, termed root exudates. This symbiosis leads to more complex interactions, influencing plant growth and competition for resources. Much of the nutrient cycling and disease suppression by antibiotics required by plants, occurs immediately adjacent to roots due to root exudates and metabolic products of symbiotic and pathogenic communities of microorganisms. The rhizosphere also provides space to produce allelochemicals to control neighbours and relatives.

Lateral root Plant root

Lateral roots, emerging from the pericycle, extend horizontally from the primary root (radicle) and over time makeup the iconic branching pattern of root systems. They contribute to anchoring the plant securely into the soil, increasing water uptake, and facilitates the extraction of nutrients required for the growth and development of the plant. Lateral roots increase the surface area of a plant's root system and can be found in great abundance in several plant species. In some cases, lateral roots have been found to form symbiotic relationships with rhizobia (bacteria) and mycorrhizae (fungi) found in the soil, to further increase surface area and increase nutrient uptake.

Lorna Casselton British geneticist, academic and educator

Lorna Ann Casselton, was a British academic and biologist. She was Professor Emeritus of Fungal Genetics in the Department of Plant Science at the University of Oxford, and was known for her genetic and molecular analysis of the mushroom Coprinus cinereus and Coprinus lagopus.

Janet Thornton British bioinformatician and academic

Dame Janet Maureen Thornton, is a senior scientist and director emeritus at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). She is one of the world's leading researchers in structural bioinformatics, using computational methods to understand protein structure and function. She served as director of the EBI from October 2001 to June 2015, and played a key role in ELIXIR.

Peter Schwerdtfeger

Peter Schwerdtfeger is a German scientist. He holds a chair in theoretical chemistry at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand, serves as Director of the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics, is the Head of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, and is a former president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Ottoline Leyser British botanist

Dame Henrietta Miriam Ottoline Leyser is a British plant biologist and Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge, Chief Executive Officer of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge.

Julian Michael Hibberd is a Professor of Photosynthesis at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Cathie Martin British botanist

Catherine Rosemary Martin is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of East Anglia 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.

Shankar Balasubramanian Indian-born British chemist

Sir Shankar Balasubramanian is an Indian-born British chemist and Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is recognised for his contributions in the field of nucleic acids. He is scientific founder of Solexa and Cambridge Epigenetix.

Stephen T. Liddle FRSE FRSC is a British professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Manchester. He is Head of Inorganic Chemistry and Co-Director of the Centre for Radiochemistry Research at the University of Manchester since 2015.

Liam Dolan

Liam Dolan is the Sherardian Professor of Botany in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Giles Edward Dixon Oldroyd is a Professor at the University of Cambridge, working on beneficial Legume symbioses in Medicago truncatula. He has been a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award winner and the Society of Biology (SEB) President's Medal winner. From 2014 Giles has been in the top 1% of highly cited plant scientists across the world.

Jane A. Langdale British botanist and academic

Jane Alison Langdale, is a British botanist and academic. She is Professor of Plant Development in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford.

Anne Osbourn Professor of biology

Anne Elisabeth Osbourn is a professor of biology and group leader at the John Innes Centre, where she investigates plant natural product biosynthesis. She discovered that in the plant genome, the genes involved with biosynthesis organise in clusters. She is also a popular science communicator, poet and is the founder of the Science, Art and Writing (SAW) Initiative. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

James O. McInerney

James O. McInerney is an Irish-born microbiologist, computational evolutionary biologist, professor, and former head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology and elected Fellow of the Linnean Society. In June 2020 he was elected president-designate of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution and in 2022 he took up the role of President.

Yakov Kuzyakov Soil scientist and ecologist

Yakov Kuzyakov is a soil scientist and ecologist, professor and the head of the department of Soil Science of Temperate Ecosystems and the department of Agricultural Soil Science at the University of Göttingen. Kuzyakov is one of the most frequently cited soil scientists worldwide.

References

  1. "People - The University of Nottingham". www.nottingham.ac.uk. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  2. BBSRC. "Portfolio Analyser". bbsrc.ukri.org. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  3. "Getting to the roots of better crops". 8 November 2013.
  4. "Malcolm Bennett | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  5. "Malcolm J Bennett's Publons profile". publons.com. Retrieved 25 January 2022.