Robert Sablowski

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Professor and Head, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, John Innes Centre

EDUCATION:
• 1991 Master in Biochemistry, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
• 1995 PhD Molecular Biology, University of East Anglia, UK
• 1995 to 1999 Research Fellow in Biology, California Institute of Technology, USA

AWARDS:
• 2011 Awarded 'Faculty Member of the Year' for Plant Biology

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Plants produce new organs such as leaves throughout their lifetime. The cells required to build new organs are recruited from pools of actively dividing cells called the meristems. This continuous supply of new cells is sustained by small groups of self-renewing cells that reside at the core of the meristems and are functionally similar to stem cells in animals. The Sablowski group has been interested in how regulatory genes control the different cellular activities required for meristem maintenance and organ initiation. One approach to this problem is to reveal the changes in gene expression that are set in motion by regulatory genes, exemplified by work on the gene expression program controlled by the floral organ identity gene AGAMOUS in the early stages of organ development. Another approach is to use live imaging and modelling to understand how floral organ identity genes and some of their targets (such as JAGGED) control local growth and cell division to produce the shape of early floral organs. Current work also aims to understand how the meristem responds to stresses that cause DNA damage – based on the expectation that genome integrity is particularly important in cells that function as the long-term source of new cells to sustain plant growth.

HOME PAGE
http://www.jic.ac.uk/profile/robert-sablowski.asp