Alison Mary Smith
| Alison Smith | |
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Alison Smith at the Royal Society admissions day in London for new fellows in 2016
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| Born | Alison Mary Smith 1954 (age 62–63) |
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| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (PhD) |
| Thesis | Effect of anaerobiosis on plant metabolism (1978) |
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Alison Mary Smith (born 1954)FRS is Strategic Programme Leader at the John Innes Centre in Norwich and an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK.
Smith was educated at the University of Cambridge where she was awarded a PhD in 1978 for research into the effect of anaerobiosis on plant metabolism.
Smith studies the metabolism in plants of starch and sucrose – the carbohydrate products of photosynthesis that fuel plant growth. Her research has uncovered metabolic pathways responsible for the synthesis and degradation of starch granules in plants. She showed that these processes in leaves are subject to complex control by the circadian clock over the day-night cycle, ensuring the availability of carbohydrate to fuel metabolism during the night. Her focus is now on the mechanisms underlying this control, and the way in which carbohydrate availability is integrated with other sources of information to determine rates and patterns of growth and development in plants.
Smith uses information from her fundamental studies to examine starch turnover in crop plants. Current research on starch synthesis in cereal grains has the potential to increase crop yield, and to change important functional and nutritional properties of flour.
With George Coupland, Liam Dolan, Nicholas Harberd, Jonathan D. G. Jones, Cathie Martin, Robert Sablowski and Abigail Amey she is a co-author of the textbook Plant Biology.
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