Prof Nicholas Harberd, Sibthorpian Professor of Plant Science and Fellow of St. John’s College
Nicholas Harberd has a degree in Natural Sciences (BA (Hons.) Genetics; 1977) and an MA and PhD (Plant Genetics; 1981), all from the University of Cambridge. He was a postdoctoral scientist at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge (1982-86) and at the University of California, Berkeley, USA (1986-1988). He then returned to the UK as a project leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich UK, becoming Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia, Norwich in 2004. In 2007, he left Norwich to become Sibthorpian Professor at the University of Oxford, where he is Head of Research in the Department of Plant Sciences.
Nicholas Harberd’s work involves research and teaching in plant genetics, plant genomics, plant developmental genetics, plant growth regulation, and the evolution of land-plant growth-regulatory mechanisms. His research group discovered how the plant growth hormone gibberellin controls the growth of plants. Essentially, they showed that gibberellin promotes plant growth by overcoming the effects of a nuclear growth-inhibiting protein. In addition, his research group showed that variant forms of the growth-inhibiting protein cause the reduced stem height characteristic of the high-yielding semi-dwarf wheats of the ‘green revolution’. Currently, Nicholas Harberd’s research group is investigating how plant hormonal mechanisms of growth control arose during land-plant evolution. Additional projects use latest-generation DNA sequencing and associated bioinformatic/computational approaches (collaboration with the Oxford University Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics) to understand genome organization of a variety of model plant species. These studies range from analyses of the genomes of bryophyte (moss and liverwort) species which are in some ways representative of the very first plants to have colonized the land, to the model flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, to the more recent evolutionary changes associated with the domestication of wheat. In addition, studies of wheat genomes (in particular of the wild species from which cultivated wheat is derived) aim to relate genetic variation to variation in stress tolerance.
Nicholas Harberd has written over 75 publications and papers about his research and is regularly invited to give named lectures and speak at international conferences. He is the author of ‘Seed to Seed’ (2006; Bloomsbury), a popular science book published to widespread critical acclaim and a co-author of ‘Plant Biology’, an important new undergraduate and graduate level university text book (2009; Garland Science). Nicholas Harberd was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2009.
