Taylor, Gail - University of Southampton - Discipline of Biological Sciences

个人简介

Professor Gail Taylor is a leader in Plant and Sustainability Science, where her research focusses on the challenges of sustainable energy and food production and adaptation of biological systems to the changing climate. She joined the University of Southampton in 1999 and has held several positions in the university including Director of Research for Biological Sciences (2012-2015) and Chair of the university-wide multidisciplinary Energy research group. She works as part of the UK Energy Research Centre, is a member of the Strategic Advisory Group for Bioenergy of the Energy Technologies Institute and sits on several international panels for research assessment including in Finland, Canada and France. Professor Taylor has a global reputation for her research on sustainable bioenergy and leafy food crops and has published more than 130 journal articles on this topic and has trained over 45 Phd students. She is currently leading a 23 partner European consortium that aims to bring the latest molecular and DNA sequencing technologies to the development of non-food bioenergy crops for Europe including elephant grass, giant reed and poplar trees that can be grown on marginal land. Alongside this, she works internationally on the greenhouse gas balance of bioenergy cropping systems and is currently leading an EPSRC SUPERGEN project on assessing the greenhouse gas cost of UK and imported feedstocks for bioenergy. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and in 2015 was nominated as a member of The Company of The Annals of Botany – the longest running general plant biology journal. She is Chair and Director of the Vitacress Conservation Trust – a Trust dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of chalk streams, where she focusses her own research on using genomic tools for the sustainable intensification of watercress – developing a food crop with better nutritional and health benefits whilst having a reduced environmental footprint.

研究领域

1. Food for Health and Sustainability: leafy crops molecular breeding ● I am investigating the genetic basis of leaf quality and yield in lettuce and in molecular breeding for high productivity and improved anti carcinogenic properties in baby leaf crops including watercress. This hinges on interdisciplinary collaboration with Medicine and Chemistry. ● We are using the latest high throughput genotyping tools, in particular, a single feature polymorphism genotyping chip with more than 20,000 features and RIL and association resources in collaboration with UC Davis. We currently have a marker for phenolic content which is being tested in several commercial crosses, for the first time in the UK in 2015. ● For watercress, we are sequencing the first watercress genome with RNASeq (now completed) for genotypes of interest to underpin molecular breeding in this crop. We have registered a new watercress, ‘Boldrewood’ and are developing the very first molecular genetic map of watercress and a novel F2 population to underpin new molecular breeding in this nutrient intense crop. ● This research has been funded by industry since 1999, through several CASE collaborations and a BBSRC IPA award. We currently receive funds from Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s Supermarkets PLC, Shamrock Seeds, Vitacress Salads. Our new collaboration with Vilmorin (following acquisition of Shamrock Seeds) is progressing well with a move towards high throughput genotyping and phenotyping and GWAS approaches over the coming years. ● Our latest grant from Sainsbury’s that was won from the Annual Agri-food R and D competition will investigate the potential for reduced water use in the growth of potted and cut herbs. We are using deficit irrigation approaches to reduce the water footprint of herbs and leaf crops. 2. Sustainable Bioenergy Trees- transition to the low carbon economy ● I have a wide expertise in the technology development and deployment of biomass for bioenergy including heat, power and liquid fuels, with particular emphasis on the use of trees as sources of sustainable feedstock supply. ● My research stretches from molecular through to ecosystem services and extends to policy development, but the underlying theme is always to enhance the deployment of sustainable bioenergy systems for a global future with less dependence on fossil fuels. ● At the molecular level, I hold one of the few F2 population of trees suitable for QTL mapping and have used this extensively to identify areas of the poplar tree genome important for traits related to bioenergy. This includes our current research where we have identified QTL for glucose yield (for bioethanol) and through genetical genomics linked this to a set of target genes for enhance bioethanol production, that we are now investigating using RNAi approaches in both poplar and Arabidopsis. Over the past five years, as part of my leadership on the Executive group of the Network of Excellence, EVOLTREE (Trees as drivers of evolution and diversity), an international collaboration has developed black poplar as an outstanding resource for studying breeding and conservation goals, including those related to bioenergy. We have developed a wide Association Population with more than 1000 individuals, sourced from diverse climatic zones across Europe, have re-sequenced the genome of black poplar using Illumina technology using a panel of fifty genotypes. We have used this resource to identify 2 million black poplar SNPs and have designed a SNP chip for our wide use. This resource is one of the very first for a native European tree and will be of outstanding importance for the next few years, until our ambition to sequence 1000 poplar trees in fulfilled. For bioenergy, from this research I have developed a new EU network WATBIO (www.watbio.eu) to develop molecular breeding approaches in three bioenergy crops, where limited resources exist – poplar, miscanthus and arundo. ● At the ecosystem level¸ current funded research by ETI and NERC is focused on understanding the carbon balance of bioenergy systems in the UK. Can bioenergy cropping systems have a better greenhouse gas balance than arable crops and grassland and how can they be managed to best effect? To answer these questions, the ELUM project alongside the Carbo-BioCrop consortium has developed a UK network of flux sites where in November 2011, we began measuring GHG balance, including at a willow bioenergy site in Sussex. Our previous model-based research, suggested than land transitions to bioenergy, other than tall forest and permanent grassland, give a net benefit for carbon balance, but experimental evidence is required to support this. The network of flux sites is world-leading and will provide over the next few years, information of an unprecedented impact. I am hoping to bring USA, and UK leaders together at a Royal Society discussion meeting in 2016, as our data become available and initiate two new project using this resource MAGLUE and ADVENT. ● At the Policy level, work on policy input for bioenergy has included contributions to the original BBSRC 2007 review of bioenergy, leading to the development of the BBSRC Bioenergy Research Centre, current contributions from our yield modeling activity to the UK EMSE Energy model, UK DECC Bioenergy Strategy and DECC Energy modeling, as well as input to UKERC activity in the area of bioenergy developments. Internationally, I am involved with USA-EU twinning activities on LCAs for bioenergy and their use in certification systems for sustainable bioenergy. A recent grant on the global ecosystem service footprint of biofuel imports to the UK has just kicked-off (funded by UKERC) and this will provide a novel framework comparing the global ecosystem services impacts of biofuels compared to oil-based transport fuel for the UK. I sat on the ETI Strategic Advisory Group, A* Singapore Bioenergy Research Panel and UKERC Research Committee covering bioenergy and responsible for more than £5 million of research funding. Targets – Initiate the new EPSRC and NERC funded consortia ADVENT and MAGLUE. Develop the emerging Impact Case Study ‘Process-based model for SRC willow and poplar’. High quality papers in TREE, GCBB and PNAS. 3. Global Climate Change – Adaptation and Mitigation – Molecular Ecology. ● I have a long standing interest in forest ecosystems and climate change. This has been focused on the atmospheric environment and on temperate forests and also on the effects of drought on plant genetics, genomics, function and growth. For ten years, I was PI on one of only four large global forest ecosystem experiments to quantify the impacts of rising atmospheric CO2 on forest ecosystems, and the only experiment outside the USA, where we elucidated many of the fundamental changes in the carbon balance and growth of a fast growing poplar forest, subjected to the conditions of 2050 (POPFACE and EUROFACE). We used this forest ecosystem to identify novel delays in autumnal senescence in response to future CO2 and have elucidated the mechanism responsible for these changes, receiving wide publicity of this research. I have been one of the European leaders in the network of Excellence EVOLTREE, where we have identified the likely impacts of climate change on trees as drivers of evolution within complex forest ecosystems. We have elucidated the evolutionary history of black poplar and adaptation to current rainfall regimes from southern to northern Europe, including identifying novel differences in carbon isotopic signature, genes for stomatal patterning and tree development, that differ between southern and northern black poplar tree populations subjected to different natural drought regimes. It seems likely that adaptation to drought has involved a suite of genetic changes that contrast to trees in northern Europe, adapted to plentiful rainfall and extreme responses to rare drought events.

近期论文

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Biomass traits and candidate genes for bioenergy revealed through association genetics in coppiced European Populus nigra (L.) - Allwright, Mike Robert, Payne, Adrienne, Emiliani, Giovanni, Milner, Suzanne, Viger, Maud, Rouse, Franchesca, Keurentjes, Joost J.B., Bérard, Aurélie, Wildhagen, Henning, Faivre-Rampant, Patricia, Polle, Andrea, Morgante, Michele and Taylor, Gail Published:2016Publication:Biotechnology for BiofuelsVolume:9, (195)Page Range:1-22doi:10.1186/s13068-016-0603-1 Plant adaptation or acclimation to rising CO2? Insight from first multigenerational RNA-Seq transcriptome - Watson-Lazowski, Alexander, Lin, Yun, Miglietta, Franco, Edwards, Richard J., Chapman, Mark A. and Taylor, Gail Published:2016Publication:Global Change BiologyVolume:22, (11)Page Range:3760-3773doi:10.1111/gcb.13322 Characterization of the poplar pan-genome by genome-wide identification of structural variation - Pinosio, S., Giacomello, S., Faivre-Rampant, P., Taylor, G., Jorge, V., Le Paslier, M.C., Zaina, G., Bastien, C., Cattonaro, F., Marroni, F. and Morgante, M. Published:2016Publication:Molecular Biology and EvolutionVolume:33, (10)Page Range:2706-2719doi:10.1093/molbev/msw161 Biochar alters the soil microbiome and soil function: results of next-generation amplicon sequencing across Europe - Jenkins, J.R., Viger, M., Arnold, E.C., Harris, Z.M., Ventura, M., Miglietta, F., Girardin, C., Edwards, R.J., Rumpel, C., Fornasier, F., Zavalloni, C., Tonon, G., Alberti, G. and Taylor, G. Published:2016Publication:GCB BienergyPage Range:1-22doi:10.1111/gcbb.12371 Characterization of the watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. Br.; Brassicaceae) transcriptome using RNASeq and identification of candidate genes for important phytonutrient traits linked to human health - Voutsina, Nikol, Payne, Adrienne C., Hancock, Robert D., Clarkson, Graham J.J., Rothwell, Steve D., Chapman, Mark and Taylor, Gail Published:2016Publication:BMC GenomicsVolume:17, (378)Page Range:1-15doi:10.1186/s12864-016-2704-4