
Professor Giles E. D. Oldroyd
FRS
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
One hundred important questions for plant science - reflecting on a decade of plant research
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 The New phytologist 2023-03-16 pmid:36924326 doi:10.1111/nph.18663
Dancing to a different tune, can we switch from chemical to biological nitrogen fixation for sustainable food security?
Min-Yao Jhu, Giles E D Oldroyd PLoS biology 2023-03-14 pmid:36917569 pmc:PMC10013914 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3001982
Rhizopine biosensors for plant-dependent control of bacterial gene expression
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 Environmental microbiology 2022-11-25 pmid:36428208 pmc:PMC10107442 doi:10.1111/1462-2920.16288
Nutrient regulation of lipochitooligosaccharide recognition in plants via NSP1 and NSP2
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 Nature communications 2022-10-28 pmid:36307431 pmc:PMC9616857 doi:10.1038/s41467-022-33908-3
Nodulation and nitrogen fixation in Medicago truncatula strongly alters the abundance of its root microbiota and subtly affects its structure
Andrzej Tkacz, Raphael Ledermann, Anna Martyn, Sebastian Schornack, Giles E D Oldroyd, Philip S Poole Environmental microbiology 2022-09-02 pmid:36054464 pmc:PMC9804836 doi:10.1111/1462-2920.16164
Constitutive activation of a nuclear-localized calcium channel complex in Medicago truncatula
Haiyue Liu, Jie-Shun Lin, Zhenpeng Luo, Jongho Sun, Xiaowei Huang, Yang Yang, Ji Xu, Yong-Fei Wang, Peng Zhang, Giles E D Oldroyd, Fang Xie Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2022-08-16 pmid:35972963 pmc:PMC9407390 doi:10.1073/pnas.2205920119
Engineered plant control of associative nitrogen fixation
Timothy L Haskett, Ponraj Paramasivan, Marta D Mendes, Patrick Green, Barney A Geddes, Hayley E Knights, Beatriz Jorrin, Min-Hyung Ryu, Paul Brett, Christopher A Voigt, Giles E D Oldroyd, Philip S Poole Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2022-04-12 pmid:35412890 pmc:PMC9169844 doi:10.1073/pnas.2117465119
Multimodal correlative imaging and modelling of phosphorus uptake from soil by hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi
Sam Keyes, Arjen van Veelen, Dan McKay Fletcher, Callum Scotson, Nico Koebernick, Chiara Petroselli, Katherine Williams, Siul Ruiz, Laura Cooper, Robbie Mayon, Simon Duncan, Marc Dumont, Iver Jakobsen, Giles Oldroyd, Andrzej Tkacz, Philip Poole, Fred Mosselmans, Camelia Borca, Thomas Huthwelker, David L Jones, Tiina Roose The New phytologist 2022-01-19 pmid:35043984 pmc:PMC9307049 doi:10.1111/nph.17980
Symbiotic regulation: How plants seek salvation in starvation
Edwin Jarratt-Barnham, Darius Zarrabian, Giles E D Oldroyd Current biology : CB 2022-01-11 pmid:35015997 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.059
Processing of NODULE INCEPTION controls the transition to nitrogen fixation in root nodules
Jian Feng, Tak Lee, Katharina Schiessl, Giles E D Oldroyd Science (New York, N.Y.) 2021-10-28 pmid:34709900 doi:10.1126/science.abg2804
A mycorrhiza-associated receptor-like kinase with an ancient origin in the green lineage
Héctor Montero, Tak Lee, Boas Pucker, Gabriel Ferreras-Garrucho, Giles Oldroyd, Samuel F Brockington, Akio Miyao, Uta Paszkowski Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2021-06-23 pmid:34161289 pmc:PMC8237591 doi:10.1073/pnas.2105281118
Lipid exchanges drove the evolution of mutualism during plant terrestrialization
Mélanie K Rich, Nicolas Vigneron, Cyril Libourel, Jean Keller, Li Xue, Mohsen Hajheidari, Guru V Radhakrishnan, Aurélie Le Ru, Seydina Issa Diop, Giacomo Potente, Elena Conti, Danny Duijsings, Aurélie Batut, Pauline Le Faouder, Kyoichi Kodama, Junko Kyozuka, Erika Sallet, Guillaume Bécard, Marta Rodriguez-Franco, Thomas Ott, Justine Bertrand-Michel, Giles E D Oldroyd, Péter Szövényi, Marcel Bucher, Pierre-Marc Delaux Science (New York, N.Y.) 2021-05-21 pmid:34016782 doi:10.1126/science.abg0929
Publisher Correction: The calcium-permeable channel OSCA1.3 regulates plant stomatal immunity
Kathrin Thor, Shushu Jiang, Erwan Michard, Jeoffrey George, Sönke Scherzer, Shouguang Huang, Julian Dindas, Paul Derbyshire, Nuno Leitão, Thomas A DeFalco, Philipp Köster, Kerri Hunter, Sachie Kimura, Julien Gronnier, Lena Stransfeld, Yasuhiro Kadota, Christoph A Bücherl, Myriam Charpentier, Michael Wrzaczek, Daniel MacLean, Giles E D Oldroyd, Frank L H Menke, M Rob G Roelfsema, Rainer Hedrich, José Feijó, Cyril Zipfel Nature 2020-11-17 pmid:33199921 doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2954-9
The calcium-permeable channel OSCA1.3 regulates plant stomatal immunity
Kathrin Thor, Shushu Jiang, Erwan Michard, Jeoffrey George, Sönke Scherzer, Shouguang Huang, Julian Dindas, Paul Derbyshire, Nuno Leitão, Thomas A DeFalco, Philipp Köster, Kerri Hunter, Sachie Kimura, Julien Gronnier, Lena Stransfeld, Yasuhiro Kadota, Christoph A Bücherl, Myriam Charpentier, Michael Wrzaczek, Daniel MacLean, Giles E D Oldroyd, Frank L H Menke, M Rob G Roelfsema, Rainer Hedrich, José Feijó, Cyril Zipfel Nature 2020-08-27 pmid:32846426 pmc:PMC8435934 doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2702-1
Ligand-recognizing motifs in plant LysM receptors are major determinants of specificity
Zoltan Bozsoki, Kira Gysel, Simon B Hansen, Damiano Lironi, Christina Krönauer, Feng Feng, Noor de Jong, Maria Vinther, Manoj Kamble, Mikkel B Thygesen, Ebbe Engholm, Christian Kofoed, Sébastien Fort, John T Sullivan, Clive W Ronson, Knud J Jensen, Mickaël Blaise, Giles Oldroyd, Jens Stougaard, Kasper R Andersen, Simona Radutoiu Science (New York, N.Y.) 2020-08-09 pmid:32764065 doi:10.1126/science.abb3377