Tom Roberts’ research concerns a variety of plant proteins, their properties, roles in the plant, and functionality in foods. His major interest for many years has been the structure, properties and functions of a family of proteins called serpins in plants. He also has interests in peanut allergens, responses of plants to an energy crisis, and the chemistry and biochemistry of sorghum grain.
Most serpins are potent, irreversible inhibitors of specific serine or cysteine proteases. Serpins are fascinating proteins from many perspectives and have a remarkable variety of functions in animals. The structures and functions of plant and algal serpins remain largely unknown but some breakthroughs have been made in recent years - see Ahn et al. (2009) and Lampl et al. (2010) listed below, as well as Lampl et al. (2013; doi: 10.1111/tpj.12141). Tom’s current work focuses on serpins in the unicellular green alga, Chlamydomonas, in Arabidopsis, in barley and wheat.
Another of Tom Roberts’ research interests is the allergenicity of peanuts. Peanut allergy is a major problem in Australia and many other countries; indeed some people (including children) can suffer life-threatening anaphylactic shock upon ingestion of peanuts, even extremely small amounts. The allergens in peanut kernels are seed storage proteins but what determines their absolute and relative abundance in the mature peanut? See Tom’s recent paper (Walczyk et al., 2013) for one answer to this question.
Tom is also interested is the response of plants to an energy crisis. The model system for this work is the rice coleoptile, the sheath that protects the growing shoot from a germinated rice grain. Using oxygen deprivation - either hypoxia (low oxygen) or anoxia (no oxygen) - an energy crisis can be induced during growth of the coleoptile. Responses studied include energy allocation, transcription (microarrays) and translation (proteomics). See Tom’s recent paper (Edwards et al., 2012) for an analysis of energy production and allocation in rice coleoptiles under oxygen deprivation.
One of Tom’s more recent research interests is in the chemistry and biochemistry of sorghum grain. His other new research topic is the physiological response of cotton plants to flooding.
To pursue his interests, Tom’s research involves a broad range of techniques in plant physiology, cell biology, molecular biology and protein biochemistry. Techniques employed recently include radiolabelling, confocal microscopy, microarray analysis, RT-PCR and 2D-DIGE. Bioinformatics analysis is involved in many aspects of his projects.
Please contact Tom Roberts if you are interested in pursuing a PhD in one of the above topics
