̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Sam Brockington

Collections-based research and innovation receives vital investment from Research England

ta385 — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 10:58:00 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� cares for the country’s highest concentration of internationally important collections outside London, with more than five million works of art, artefacts and specimens. Together, these collections play a fundamental role in delivering the ̽��ֱ�� mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence and encompasses collaboration with and support of world-renowned researchers, game-changing research-led exhibitions and wide-ranging inclusion and learning programmes, promoting wellbeing, creativity and connectivity.

“I’m delighted that Research England has made such a strong statement of support for collections-based research at Cambridge, particularly in a challenging funding landscape,” said Kamal Munir, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for ̽��ֱ�� Community and Engagement.

“ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� continues to invest in enhanced research infrastructure and services to generate and enable research that spans the arts and the sciences, including via a Strategic Research Initiative, Collections-Connections-Communities that provides a convening space for research that benefits our communities. HEMG funding is critical in ensuring our collections support researchers and students across the UK and worldwide, through infrastructure, services, staffing and equitable collaboration.”

This year, the ̽��ֱ�� Herbarium joins the portfolio for the first time and the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences rejoins the portfolio.

Sam Brockington, academic lead for the Herbarium, which was recently awarded Designated status, said: “It’s fantastic to see the ̽��ֱ�� Herbarium receive investment in this way. ̽��ֱ��Herbarium is the fourth-largest of its kind in the country, and a rich resource that supports a huge range of scientific and humanities research. Research supported by the Herbarium ranges from the discovery of species new to science, to the genomics of crop improvement, and investigations into the history and development of scientific ideas and natural history. This investment will enable us to substantially develop our support for the wider academic community.”

Dr Liz Hide, Director of the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, which has been awarded £210,000 a year, said: “I’m delighted that Research England has recognised the strength of the Sedgwick’s collections and their importance to the UK and international research landscape. Over the next five years, this new investment will be transformative for the Sedgwick Museum, ensuring researchers can fully utilise our new Collections Research Centre, and enabling our outstanding collections to inspire many new avenues of research across both the sciences and the humanities.”

Dr Juliette Fritsch, the ̽��ֱ��’s first Director for Collections’ Strategy, said: "I’m thrilled to work across the incredible resources contained within the ̽��ֱ��’s museums, libraries, and botanic garden collections to create strategies together, building on major initiatives, such as the cross-collections Power and Memory programme. These integrated approaches enhance our collective impact and are only possible through the input of our funders, including Research England and Arts Council England.”

̽��ֱ��full list of ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge museums and collections awarded HEMG funding are:

1. Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Botanic Garden
2. Fitzwilliam Museum
3. Kettle’s Yard
4. Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology (MAA)
5. ̽��ֱ�� Museum of Zoology
6. Polar Museum
7. Whipple Museum of the History of Science
8. Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences
9. Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Herbarium

Research England has supported nine of the ̽��ֱ��’s museums and collections with £3m a year of Higher Education Museums, Galleries and Collections (HEMG) funding, over the coming five years.

HEMG funding is critical in ensuring our collections support researchers and students across the UK and worldwide

Kamal Munir

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Rhododendron brookianum type specimen from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Herbarium

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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̽��ֱ��tulip hunter of Toktogul

lw355 — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 09:15:17 +0000

Brett Wilson's love of wild tulips has taken him to some of the most spectacular places in Central Asia, where he discovered a new species in Toktogul, Kyrgyzstan. His work has helped to uncover the plight of 53 tulips which have been added to the 'Red List' of threatened species.

Blushing plants reveal when fungi are growing in their roots

jg533 — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 07:06:15 +0000

This is the first time this vital, 400 million year old process has been visualised in real time in full root systems of living plants. Understanding the dynamics of plant colonisation by fungi could help to make food production more sustainable in the future.

Almost all crop plants form associations with a particular type of fungi – called arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi – in the soil, which greatly expand their root surface area. This mutually beneficial interaction boosts the plant’s ability to take up nutrients that are vital for growth.

̽��ֱ��more nutrients plants obtain naturally, the less artificial fertilisers are needed. Understanding this natural process, as the first step towards potentially enhancing it, is an ongoing research challenge. Progress is likely to pay huge dividends for agricultural productivity.

In a study published in the journal PLOS Biology, researchers used the bright red pigments of beetroot – called betalains – to visually track soil fungi as they colonised plant roots in a living plant.

“We can now follow how the relationship between the fungi and plant root develops, in real-time, from the moment they come into contact. We previously had no idea about what happened because there was no way to visualise it in a living plant without the use of elaborate microscopy,” said Dr Sebastian Schornack, a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Sainsbury Laboratory and joint senior author of the paper.

To achieve their results, the researchers engineered two model plant species – a legume and a tobacco plant – so that they would produce the highly visible betalain pigments when arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi were present in their roots. This involved combining the control regions of two genes activated by mycorrhizal fungi with genes that synthesise red-coloured betalain pigments.

̽��ֱ��plants were then grown in a transparent structure so that the root system was visible, and images of the roots could be taken with a flatbed scanner without disturbing the plants.

Using their technique, the researchers could select red pigmented parts of the root system to observe the fungus more closely as it entered individual plant cells and formed elaborate tree-like structures – called arbuscules – which grow inside the plant’s roots. Arbuscules take up nutrients from the soil that would otherwise be beyond the reach of the plant.

Other methods exist to visualise this process, but these involve digging up and killing the plant and the use of chemicals or expensive microscopy. This work makes it possible for the first time to watch by eye and with simple imaging how symbiotic fungi start colonising living plant roots, and inhabit parts of the plant root system over time.

“This is an exciting new tool to visualise this, and other, important plant processes. Beetroot pigments are a distinctive colour, so they’re very easy to see. They also have the advantage of being natural plant pigments, so they are well tolerated by plants,” said Dr Sam Brockington, a researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, and joint senior author of the paper.

Mycorrhiza fungi are attracting growing interest in agriculture. This new technique provides the ability to ‘track and trace’ the presence of symbiotic fungi in soils from different sources and locations. ̽��ֱ��researchers say this will enable the selection of fungi that colonise plants fastest and provide the biggest benefits in agricultural scenarios.

Understanding and exploiting the dynamics of plant root system colonisation by fungi has potential to enhance future crop production in an environmentally sustainable way. If plants can take up more nutrients naturally, this will reduce the need for artificial fertilisers – saving money and reducing associated water pollution.

This research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Royal Society, and Natural Environment Research Council.

Reference
Timoneda, A. & Yunusov, T. et al: ‘MycoRed: Betalain pigments enable in vivo real-time visualisation of arbuscular mycorrhizal colonisation.’ PLOS Biology, July 2021. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001326

Scientists have created plants whose cells and tissues ‘blush’ with beetroot pigments when they are colonised by fungi that help them take up nutrients from the soil.

We can now follow how the relationship between the fungi and plant root develops, in real-time, from the moment they come into contact.

Sebastian Schornack

Temur Yunusov and Alfonso Timoneda

Cells of roots colonised by fungi turn red

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Call of the wild collector

lw355 — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 06:00:53 +0000

Walking at ‘botanist pace’ on Mount Terror in South Africa, Dr Ángela Cano likes to stop and smell the succulents. She then measures, photographs, presses specimens and gathers seeds. Her work is helping to safeguard some of the rarest plants on Earth.