Anne Osbourn

FRS
Professor Anne Osbourn at the John Innes Centre in 2015
Born
Anne Elisabeth Osbourn
EducationBingley Grammar School
Alma materDurham University
University of Birmingham
Scientific career
FieldsNatural products
InstitutionsJohn Innes Centre
University of East Anglia
Sainsbury Laboratory
New Phytologist
ThesisHost adaptation and variation in septoria nodorum (1985)
Websitewww.jic.ac.uk/people/anne-osbourn

Anne Elisabeth Osbourn OBE FRS[1] is a professor of biology and group leader at the John Innes Centre,[2] where she investigates plant natural product biosynthesis. She discovered that in the plant genome, the genes involved with biosynthesis organise in clusters. She is also a popular science communicator, poet and is the founder of the Science, Art and Writing (SAW) Initiative.[3] She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.[4]

Early life and education

Osbourn grew up in West Yorkshire.[5] Her parents both studied and lectured English literature[5] and her father served in the army during World War II.[5] She became interested in plants as a child and she attended Bingley Grammar School graduating in 1979. She earned a bachelor's degree in botany at Durham University in 1982.[6] At this time, researchers worked out how to transform the Rhizobium nitrogen fixation genes into the bacterium Escherichia coli.[5] Osbourn moved to the University of Birmingham for her doctoral studies on host adaptation in Septoria nodorum, supervised by Chris Caten.[5] She has described the Salem State University educationalist Louise Swiniarksi as her 'anchor throughout my adult life'.[5]

Research and career

Osbourn moved to Norwich in 1985 to work as a post-doctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre . In 1987 she joined The Sainsbury Laboratory as a Research Fellow, and she became a group leader in 1999. In 2005 she re-joined the John Innes Centre as a group leader, and was appointed head of the Department for Metabolic Biology in 2006.

Her early work looked at saponins and their role in plant defence.[7][8] Osbourn studies how natural products interact with natural organisms.[9] In particular, she has worked on the biosynthesis of triterpene. She identified that metabolic pathways organise in operon-like clusters, which allowed her to develop a novel opportunity to discover natural product pathways through genome mining. The natural products include terpenes, which can be used in the pharmaceutical industry as well as food and manufacturing.[10][11]

Her research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).[12]

In 2006, Osbourn became an Honorary Professor[13] at the University of East Anglia. Since 2014 she has been the director of the OpenPlant Synthetic Biology Research Centre,[14] a BBSRC and EPSRC-funded Synthetic Biology Research Centre led jointly by the John Innes Centre and the University of Cambridge. The Cambridge-based Director is Professor Jim Haseloff and the formal lead is Professor Sir David Baulcombe.

She was the Director of the Norwich Research Park Industrial Biotechnology Alliance from 2013 to 2019.

As a group leader at the John Innes Centre she leads a research group working on plant natural products, their biosynthesis, function, mechanisms of metabolic diversification and metabolic engineering.

Public engagement

In 2004, Osbourn was appointed to the UEA Creative Writing Course as a Nesta dreamtime fellow. Here she wrote poetry about her life as a plant scientist.[15][16] Since then Osbourn has become a popular science writer, and inspired by her own creative practice she founded the Science, Art and Writing (SAW) Trust in 2005.[5][17][3][18] The SAW Trust is an international charity that promotes innovation in science communication, and works with young people from elementary schools in initiatives which bring together scientists, writers and artists to explore creative science communication initiatives.[5] The SAW Trust, working with educational bureaus and schools in China, has built an extensive educational programme for schools.[19] Over 1,000 children have now taken part in SAW projects in schools in China.

In 2016 Osbourn took part in an international exchange with the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.[20]

Honours and Editorial positions

Osbourn was elected to AcademiaNet in 2014.[21] She is an editor of the New Phytologist[15] and is on the editorial board of Molecular Plant.

She has won various awards and honours, including the medal of the University of Helsinki in 2003. In 2018 she was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and in 2019 Osbourn was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).[22][23] She is the thirtieth research who has been elected Fellow from the John Innes Centre.[22]

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to plant science.[24]

Patents

  • 2011 Root-specific promoters[25]
  • 2008 Enzymes involved in triterpene synthesis[26]

References

  1. ↑ "Anne Osbourn - Royal Society". Royalsociety.org. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  2. ↑ Anne Osbourn publications from Europe PubMed Central
  3. 1 2 Osbourn A (2008). "SAW: breaking down barriers between art and science". PLOS Biology. 6 (8): e211. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060211. PMC 2525686. PMID 18752351.
  4. ↑ "2022 NAS Election".
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Professor Anne Osbourn". John Innes Centre. 21 November 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  6. ↑ "Gazette, XXVII (ns) including supplement". Durham University. p. 45. Retrieved 13 May 2019.
  7. ↑ Bouarab K, Melton R, Peart J, Baulcombe D, Osbourn A (2002). "A saponin-detoxifying enzyme mediates suppression of plant defences". Nature. 418 (6900): 889–92. Bibcode:2002Natur.418..889B. doi:10.1038/nature00950. PMID 12192413. S2CID 4348886. Closed access icon
  8. ↑ "Anne Osbourn at the 2014 DOE JGI Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting". Youtube.com. DOE Joint Genome Institute. 23 April 2014. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  9. ↑ Boutanaev AM, Moses T, Zi J, Nelson DR, Mugford ST, Peters RJ, Osbourn A (2015). "Investigation of terpene diversification across multiple sequenced plant genomes". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 112 (1): E81-8. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112E..81B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1419547112. PMC 4291660. PMID 25502595.
  10. ↑ Anon (2005). "Multiple Campylobacter Genomes Sequenced". PLOS Biology. 3 (1): e40. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030040. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 539341. Open access icon
  11. ↑ "Portfolio Analyser". gow.bbsrc.ukri.org. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
  12. ↑ "Professor Anne Osbourne on the UEA website". University of East Anglia (www.uea.ac.uk). Retrieved 15 March 2022.
  13. ↑ "Open Plant Management". OpenPlant.
  14. 1 2 Osbourn A (October 2015). "Anne Osbourn". The New Phytologist. 208 (1): 23–5. doi:10.1111/nph.13616. PMID 26311283.
  15. ↑ Osbourn A (January 2006). "The poetry of science". Nature Reviews. Microbiology. 4 (1): 77–80. doi:10.1038/nrmicro1321. PMID 16357863. S2CID 27186317. Closed access icon
  16. ↑ "SAW antibiotics book launch, October 2017 » The SAW Trust". Sawtrust.org. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  17. ↑ Osbourn, Anne (2009). "A meeting place: The Science, Art and Writing initiative". Current Science. 97 (11): 1547–1554. ISSN 0011-3891. JSTOR 24107294.
  18. ↑ "SAW Trust Worldwide". www.sawtrust.org. Retrieved 15 March 2022.
  19. ↑ "Professor Anne Osbourn | Royal Society". Royalsociety.org. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  20. ↑ "Prof. Anne Osbourn - AcademiaNet". Academia-net.org. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  21. 1 2 Hill, Chris (2019). "Scientists honoured during 'golden age of discovery' at Norwich Research Park". Edp24.co.uk. Eastern Daily Press. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  22. ↑ "Professor Anne Osbourn elected as Fellow of the Royal Society". John Innes Centre. 17 April 2019. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  23. ↑ "No. 62866". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 December 2019. p. N14.
  24. ↑ "06.414 - Root-Specific Promoters | PBL Technology". Pbltechnology.com. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  25. ↑ "Enzymes involved in triterpene synthesis - Patent US8614369 - PubChem". Pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
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