£14m study to look at plant protein regulation

Also involving University College London and the University of Cambridge, the BBSRC-funded project will use molecular biology techniques and big data analysis to decipher the rules governing the regulation of protein abundance in plants.

Protein regulation underpins many important agricultural traits with the two so-called ‘green revolutions’ - which resulted from the development of dwarf wheat and flood-tolerant rice varieties - being prime examples, says Rothamsted.

Project lead Professor Freddie Theodoulou says despite it being more than six decades since Francis Crick proposed his Central Dogma of molecular biology - which states that information flows from DNA to RNA to protein - scientists still do not fully understand how this process is controlled.

She says: “This project provides a fantastic opportunity to tackle the important question of how plant proteins are regulated.

“Plants are constantly producing, using and recycling proteins. Changes to the proteins in plant cells can have huge implications, affecting a cell’s size or role, and altering the plant’s nutritional value or response to environment changes.