Richard Morris Group

Richard J. Morris

is one of the PLAMORF group leaders, in Computational & Systems Biology at the John Innes Centre and Professor in Applied Mathematics. He obtained a BSc and MSc in theoretical physics from the Technical University of Graz, Austria. After that he was awarded a PhD fellowship to carry out research in computational biology at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). He gained postdoctoral experience in Bayesian inference (MRC-LMB, Global Phasing) and structural bioinformatics (EMBL-EBI) before taking up the position of group leader in Computational Biology at the John Innes Centre. He became Head of Department for Computational and Systems Biology in 2010 before taking on the role of Institute Strategic Programme Leader and associate research director in 2013.

Richard is interested in a variety of biological problems, in particular those that can be reduced to physical principles and quantitative analyses. His primary research focus is on how plants communicate over intra- and intercellular distances, i.e. understanding how environmental stimuli are encoded as signals and how these signals are transmitted and decoded.

Find out more about him and his group on the John Innes Centre website, ResearchGate and LinkeIn.

Publications in PLAMORF:

Long-Distance Transported RNAs: From Identity to Function. Annual Review of Plant Biology 2022, doi: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-070121-033601

Interview with Richard

Richard Morris

Melissa Tomkins

Melissa Tomkins

is a postdoctoral scientist in the Computational & Systems Biology group at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. She is interested in the use of simulation-based modelling techniques to understand complex systems. Her particular focus is on developing modelling methods that link processes across different spatial and temporal scales.

Melissa obtained her BSc from Bangor University Wales, in Oceanography and computing. She then joined the Institute of Complex Systems Simulation at the University of Southampton, with her PhD thesis – involving simulating marine phytoplankton ecosystems – being based at the National Oceanography Centre. After her PhD, she joined the John Innes Centre, where she developed a complex, multi-scale modelling approach to investigate the dynamics of insect-spread pathogens, using data from crop fields in the US and Poland. She now uses the skills and tools she obtained by developing these diverse models to understand how plants send and receive signals in response to environmental changes.

Visit her profile on: ResearchGate and LinkedIn.

Franziska Hoerbst

is a PhD student in Richard Morris’ group at the John Innes Centre. She wants to know more about the interaction networks of mRNA and RNA binding proteins (RBP), but also about the signalling potential of mRNAs and how nutritional conditions influence mRNA mobility. Franziska previously studied molecular biology at the University of Vienna & Max Perutz Labs.

In PLAMORF she wants to reduce mRNAs to their biophysical properties. This might help to obtain a sharp picture of the long-distance RNA transport. mRNA – protein interactions are explored from this perspective and their influence on mobility is evaluated.

Franziska is co-founder of the climate science communication podcast 5MinutenClimateChance (in German).

Visit her profile on LinkedIn and ResearchGate.

Franziska_Hoerbst

(c) Jonas Hörbst

Pirita Paajanen

Pirita Paajanen

is a senior scientist in Richard Morris’ group at the John Innes Centre. Her main insterest is in creating theories and synthetising data, bringing mathematics and bioinformatics into the project. Pirita did her BA in Oxford, followed by a Masters in Cambridge, DPhil in Oxford and Habilitation in Plant Genomics in Helsinki in 2021. She was previously working at the Sanger Institute and the Earlham Institute, and a visiting scientist in phloem development in the Helariutta group Helsinki. Publications related to PLAMORF include:

“A critical comparison of technologies for a plant genome sequencing project“.

In PLAMORF she is doing rigorous bioinformatics analysis.

Visit her profile on LinkedIn and ResearchGate or ORCID.