Rosemary Birch – RIPE Project
Rosemary worked on the RIPE Project (Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency). RIPE is a multi-institutional research project that aims to engineer plants that more efficiently turn the sun’s energy into food to sustainably increase worldwide food productivity. The RIPE project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Rosemary’s project fell broadly under the aim of furthering our understanding of Rubisco biogenesis processes and undertaking mutagenesis to modify Rubisco catalysis. Specific projects aimed to identify how natural sequence diversity in the Rubisco large subunits affect catalytic performance, determine how the large subunit amino terminus influences enzyme stability and to enhance foreign Rubisco assembly in tobacco by examining the role of RbcX and other Rubisco chaperones.
Rosemary was also involved in generating and characterising new tobacco genotypes specifically tailored for co-engineering Rubisco and its ancillary proteins.
Rosemary was part of the Centre from 2014 to 2020