Professor Claire S Grierson

B.Sc.(Warw.), Ph.D.(Cambridge)

Head of School, School of Biological Sciences
Fundamental Bioscience
Cabot Institute for the Environment
Professor, School of Biological Sciences
Plant and Agricultural Sciences

Emailheadofschool-biology@bristol.ac.uk

BS8 1TQ

Research output per year

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Personal profile

Research interests

I have spent many years researching development and differentiation - how molecules and cells become organised, especially during root development in Arabidopsis seedlings. Topics have included the role of auxin in plant cell growth, and the subcellular networks that drive tip growth in root hair cells. For more on these topics please visit our wiki. We are now applying our knowledge of plant roots to discover how roots prevent soil erosion, bearing in mind that human activity has already eroded a quarter of the vegetated land on Earth. We are also discovering how patterns of molecules and cells might be controlled. As a member of BrisSynBio and Bristol Director of the SynBio CDT I am also involved in research aimed at making the engineering of plants and cell populations more reliable.

Lay summary of research interests

We know that life is the product of complicated physical and chemical interactions between molecules, but how do these produce growth, and how is this growth controlled so that it happens at precisely the right times and in the right places? We are working to answer these questions using plants and microbes because it is easier, technically and ethically, to do powerful, informative experiments with these organisms than with animals. We often identify new molecules that are important for growth in many organisms. We are also finding out how interactions between molecules control growth. Most recently we have receved funding from the Leverhulme Trust to investigate how plant roots prevent soil erosion. This is potentially very important as we have already eroded at least a quarter of the vegetated land on earth. Our results are potentially relevant to a wide range of applications from agriculture to human health and we are exploring potential agricultural applications.

iGEM

I co-founded the University of Bristol iGEM team with Mario Di Bernardo. Each spring a joint undergraduate and postgraduate Synthetic Biology workshop is held in preparation for iGEM. The team then works through the summer on a competition entry for the international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). So far we have been very successful, winning the Best Model prize in 2008 and 2009, gold medals in 2009 and 2010, and winning Best Food or Energy Project and third place overall in 2010. Projects have included engineering bacteria to work as a team Bristol iGEM 2008, Bristol iGEM 2009, and beads containing fluorescent bacteria that are designed to make agriculture less environmentally damaging Bristol iGEM 2010.

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Structured keywords and research groupings

Cabot Institute Food Security Research
Cabot Institute Environmental Change Research
Cabot Institute Natural Hazards and Disasters Research
Cabot Institute Water Research

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Projects

6 Finished

CONFOCAL MICROSCOPY

Grierson, C. S.

1/01/09 → 1/01/10

Project: Research

REGULATION OF ARABIDOPSIS GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT BY THE S-ACYLTRANSFERASE TIP1

Grierson, C. S.

1/01/06 → 1/01/09

Project: Research

CHINA PARTNERING AWARD

Grierson, C. S.

1/04/04 → 1/04/07

Project: Research

Research Output

50 Article (Academic Journal)
4 Chapter in a book
3 Conference Contribution (Conference Proceeding)
1 Authored book
3 More

Computer-aided whole-cell design: taking a holistic approach by integrating synthetic with systems biology

Marucci, L., Barberis, M., Karr, J., Ray, O., Race, P. R., de Souza Andrade, M., Grierson, C. S., Hoffmann, S. A., Landon, S., Rech, E., Rees-Garbutt, J. P., Seabrook, R., Shaw, W. & Woods, C. J., 21 Jul 2020, (Accepted/In press) In : Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal)

Designing Minimal Genomes Using Whole-Cell Models

Rees-Garbutt, J., Chalkley, O., Landon, S., Purcell, O., Marucci, L. & Grierson, C., 11 Feb 2020, In : Nature Communications. 11, 12 p., 836 (2020).

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal)

Open Access

File

51 Downloads (Pure)

In vivo Feedback Control of an Antithetic Molecular-Titration Motif in Escherichia coli using Microfluidics

Shannon, B. M., Zamora Chimal, C. G., Postiglione, L., Salzano, D., Grierson, C. S., Marucci, L., Savery, N. J. & Di Bernardo, M., 20 Feb 2020, (Submitted) In : ACS Synthetic Biology.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal)

Datasets

Data from whole-cell modelling (12-2019)

Marucci, L. (Creator), Grierson, C. S. (Creator), Chalkley, O. (Creator), Rees-Garbutt, J. P. (Creator) & Landon, S. (Creator), University of Bristol, 6 Dec 2019

DOI: 10.5523/bris.1jj0fszzrx9qf2ldcz654qp454, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/1jj0fszzrx9qf2ldcz654qp454

Dataset