Current research directions
Somatic mutation variation in plants
Along with Alex Cagan, we are developing lines of research to investigate somatic mutation in plants. As little is known compared to animals, we aim for this research to be fairly fundamental, measuring somatic mutation rates in long lived vs short lived plant species and comparing sequencing technologies for variant calling reliability.
Telomeres across the tree of life
Having developed a telomere identification toolkit, we are in the process of analysing the Darwin Tree of Life genomes for patterns across the tree of life. There is much more variation in canonical telomeric repeats than previously thought for some groups.
Host-parasite interactions in hemiparasites
Hemiparasitic plants tend to have wider host ranges than holoparasitic plants, but this has not been rigorously quantified or related to fitness in wild plants. We are developing oxygraphis, a toolkit to analyse bipartite ecological graphs. This toolkit will be applied to wild Eyebright data from the UK.