The Millar research
group
www.amillar.org;
SysBioClub
Seminars
News (old news is here)
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Shotgun proteomics identifies 27% of Ostreococcus proteins, LeBihan et al J Proteomics 2011 |
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The proteasome is dispensable for non-transcriptional timing, but essential for the normal clock system, van Ooijen et al Current Biology 2011 |
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A non-transcriptional clock in Ostreococcus O'Neill et al. Nature 2011 (and in red blood cells!) |
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9 papers in the first three months of 2011 - please see bibliography |
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Data from our 2010 papers and data curated from the literature is available here. |
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Plant clock model predicts function of PRR5 gene, Pokhilko et al Mol Syst Biol 2010. |
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Data and analysis show how the plant clock adjusts to day length, Edwards et al Mol Syst Biol 2010. |
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Store private SBML models after optimisation with SBSI's new plugin to the PlaSMo model database. |
Biological Clocks
Plants, fungi, animals and some bacteria have internal, 24-hour clocks. These "circadian" clocks affect our lives in many ways, through industry, agriculture and human health.
Web tutorials on biological clocks: try these first, if circadian clocks are new to you.
Our research aims to understand how the circadian clock is constructed and adjusted, how it affects plant life and why the clock mechanisms are so complex. Most of our research focuses on Arabidopsis, which is a small plant with a big following. Molecular genetics and transgenic plants help us by revealing rhythms that are usually invisible: we use a reporter gene called luciferase to send us video footage when other genes are active, like the 24-hour loop at the top of this page. Mathematical modelling helps us to understand the complex data and to identify the principles behind the molecular detail. The circadian clock is an excellent system to develop new methods in this area, so studying plant clocks is one of CSBE's first projects. We are also constructing simpler clocks to test these principles using Synthetic Biology.
The links on this page lead to more details on each topic. Link to 700-word outline of our research projects, with results of a sample experiment.
Andrew Millar holds a Chair of Systems Biology at the University of Edinburgh, where he directs the Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh (CSBE). He was previously involved in the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA) and GARNet, the UK's Arabidopsis research network. A short biography is available.
Details and links:
| Animals that glow in the dark. |
| Arabidopsis thaliana, the plant that we work with most. |
| Circadian Rhythms and biological timing. |
| Video Imaging, with details on our cameras. |
| The movies - Time-lapse video of plant circadian rhythms |
| Web conferencing for collaborations in systems biology |
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Edinburgh's Systems Biology Club |
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