Giles Oldroyd
Crop Science Centre Director (on leave) and Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science
Research group: Sustainable crop nutrition
Biography
Giles Oldroyd studies interactions between plants and beneficial micro-organisms, both bacteria and fungi, that aid in the uptake of nutrients from the environment, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. These microbial associations are intracellular, allowing tight control of nutrient exchange, with sources of carbon delivered to the microorganisms from the plant in exchange for nitrogen and phosphorus. Giles’ work has dissected the signal transduction pathway in plants that allows the recognition of beneficial microorganisms and the mechanisms by which plant development is modified to support these interactions.
Giles received his BA in Plant Biology in 1994 from the University of East Anglia and his PhD in 1998 from the University of California, Berkeley. He began work in symbiotic associations in plants as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, California, under the guidance of Professor Sharon Long. He started his independent research career in 2002 as a BBSRC David Philips Fellow at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. He joined SLCU as a group leader in November 2017 (https://www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/people/giles-oldroyd), and became the Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Sciences and the director of the Crop Science Centre in October 2019. Giles has been honoured with the Society of Experimental Biology President’s Medal, a Royal Society Wolfson Research merit award, the EMBO Young Investigator award and now leads an international programme focused on engineering nitrogen-fixing cereals funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Publications
Publication
Constitutive activation of a nuclear-localized calcium channel complex in Medicago truncatula
Date: 24 July 2023
Contributors: Haiyue Liu, Jie-Shun Lin, Zhenpeng Luo, Jongho Sun, Xiaowei Huang, Yang Yang, Ji Xu, Yong-Fei Wang, Peng Zhang, Giles E. D. Oldroyd, and Fang Xie
Journal: PNAS
Publication
Dancing to a different tune, can we switch from chemical to biological nitrogen fixation for sustainable food security?
Date: 14 March 2023
Contributors: Min-Yao Jhu,Giles E. D. Oldroyd
Journal: PLOS Biology
Publication
One hundred important questions for plant science - reflecting on a decade of plant research
Date: 16 January 2023
Contributors: Emily R Larson, Emily May Armstrong, Helen Harper, Sandra Knapp, Keith J Edwards, Don Grierson, Guy Poppy, Mark W Chase, Jonathan D G Jones, Ruth Bastow, Graham Jellis, Steve Barnes, Paul Temple, Matthew Clarke, Giles Oldroyd, Claire S Grierson
Journal: The New phytologist
Publication
Rhizopine biosensors for plant-dependent control of bacterial gene expression
Date: 25 November 2022
Contributors: Timothy L Haskett, Barney A Geddes, Ponraj Paramasivan, Patrick Green, Samir Chitnavis, Marta D Mendes, Beatriz Jorrín, Hayley E Knights, Tahlia R Bastholm, Joshua P Ramsay, Giles E D Oldroyd, Philip S Poole
Journal: Environmental microbiology
Publication
Nutrient regulation of lipochitooligosaccharide recognition in plants via NSP1 and NSP2
Date: 28 October 2022
Contributors: Xin-Ran Li, Jongho Sun, Doris Albinsky, Darius Zarrabian, Raphaella Hull, Tak Lee, Edwin Jarratt-Barnham, Chai Hao Chiu, Amy Jacobsen, Eleni Soumpourou, Alessio Albanese, Wouter Kohlen, Leonie H. Luginbuehl, Bruno Guillotin, Tom Lawrensen, Hui Lin, Jeremy Murray, Emma Wallington, Wendy Harwood, Jeongmin Choi, Uta Paszkowski & Giles E. D. Oldroyd
Journal: Nature Communications
Publication
A mycorrhiza-associated receptor-like kinase with an ancient origin in the green lineage
Date: 11 May 2021
Contributors: Héctor Montero, Tak Lee, Boas Pucker, Gabriel Ferreras-Garrucho, Giles Oldroyd, Samuel F. Brockington, Akio Miyao, Uta Paszkowski
Journal: PNAS
Publication
Plants export 2-monopalmitin to supply both fatty acyl and glyceryl moieties to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
Date: 20 January 2021
Contributors: Leonie H. Luginbuehl, Harrie van Erp, Henry Cheeld, Kirankumar S. Mysore, Jiangqi Wen, Giles E.D. Oldroyd, Peter J. Eastmond.
Journal: bioRxiv
Publication
The negative regulator SMAX1 controls mycorrhizal symbiosis and strigolactone biosynthesis in rice
Date: 30 April 2020
Contributors: Jeongmin Choi, Tak Lee, Jungnam Cho, Emily K. Servante, Boas Pucker, William Summers, Sarah Bowden, Mehran Rahimi, Kyungsook An, Gynheung An, Harro J. Bouwmeester, Emma J. Wallington, Giles Oldroyd and Uta Paszkowski
Journal: Nature Communications
Publication
Understanding the arbuscule at the heart of endo- mycorrhizal symbioses in plants
Date: 11 September 2017
Contributors: Leonie H. Luginbuehl, Giles E.D. Oldroyd
Journal: Current Biology
Publication
Fatty acids in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are synthesized by the host plant
Date: 8 June 2017
Contributors: Leonie H. Luginbuehl, Guillaume N. Menard, Smita Kurup, Harrie van Erp, Guru Radhakrishnan, Andrew Breakspear, Giles E.D. Oldroyd, and Peter J. Eastmond
Journal: Science
