• Question: When did you start working with plants??

    Asked by anon-357411 to Sam on 21 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Sam Mugford

      Sam Mugford answered on 21 Mar 2023:

      Hi Erin,
      Thanks for the question. I first worked with plants when i was about 20, I was doing my degree at Bath University, and the degree included a year in industry, so i came to Norwich to work at the John Innes Centre for a year away from my studies. I worked with a team looking at the Madagascan periwinkle, which is a very useful plant because it makes drugs that we use to treat cancer. We were trying to find the genes in the periwinkle that help to make the drugs, and put them into other plants so that we could understand how they work. Because the periwinkle is a small plant, and only makes very small amounts of the drug molecules, we hoped to make transgenic plants that grow much faster (for example tobacco plants) that could make much more of the drugs so we could have a cheaper and easier way to produce the drugs.

Comments

  • Photo: Phil

    Phil commented on :

    The penny dropped just before my 19th birthday, halfway through my first year at Uni, that my future should be working with plants. A brilliant lecturer opened up how great plants are at problem solving. Then I cycled past trial plots at a nearby plant breeding station and everything fitted into place. I concentrated as much as I could on plants after that and have been working on crop genetics and breeding since graduating in 1992