Professor Andrew Fleming
Tel: +44 (0)114 222 4830
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 0002
email : a.fleming@sheffield.ac.uk
Generating an Integrative Plant Science (GIPS)
Career
BA Cambridge (1984)
PhD Cambridge (1987)
Postdoctorate, ETH-Zurich, Switzerland (1988)
Assistant, University of Bern, Switzerland (1989 - 1996)
Habilitation, University of Bern, Switzerland (1996)
Group Leader, ETH-Zurich, Switzerland (1997-2004)
Professor of Plant Science, University of Sheffield (2004-present)
Key Research Interests
Our research is focussed on understanding the mechanism of plant morphogenenesis. In particular, we are interested in understanding the interplay of cell growth and division and how these parameters are integrated into the developmental program controlling leaf size and shape. Using techniques of cell and molecular biology, we are testing hypotheses on the regulation of organogenesis. At the same time, these approaches provide functional data on gene products implicated in basic aspects of the plant cell cycle and the plant cell wall. Our focus is on an integrative approach in which, in addition to cell and molecular techniques, we are incorporating computational modeling, physiology and biochemistry to provide an organismal-level understanding of leaf formation and function.
In addition, as a result of our interest in cell division and the cell wall and how they are integrated into plant function, we have become involved in a range of collaborative ventures. For example, the interplay between development, physiology and metabolism has led to novel joint projects aimed at developing/implementing techniques for the visualization and analysis of metabolites at the cellular level and their integration with developmental processes (Paul Quick, Mike Burrell). The cell wall also plays an important role in the functioning of specific cell types required for leaf function and this has led to joint EvoDevo projects looking at aspects of plant evolution (David Beerling, Julie Gray, Charles Wellman).
The group has a strong tradition of pan-European research. If you are interested in applying for a EU-Marie Curie Fellowship to work with us, don´t hesitate to make contact.
Professional Activities
BBSRC Panel B- core member
British Society for Developmental Biology- Treasurer
Plant Molecular Biology- associate editor
Teaching
I am a developmental biologist. This involves the study of how something apparently simple (a cell) becomes something incredibly complicated (a mature, multicellular organism) in a robust and reproducible fashion. My interest is in plant development, but one of the lessons of the past decades has been how developmental concepts can be applied across the whole of biology, and it is understanding these unifying (and yet distinctive) approaches to solving common developmental problems that underpin my teaching (and my research).
At L1 I co-ordinate and teach the APS120 module (Reproduction, Development and Growth), at L2 I co-ordinate and teach the APS268 module (Genomics, Proteomics and Metabolomics), as well as the practical class APS264 (Wildlife Forensics), and at L3 I teach on APS308 (Environmental Regulation in Plants). As these modules suggest, a significant part of my teaching involves core molecular and cell biology. These approaches and techniques underpin the vast majority of modern biology and are an essential component in any biologist’s armoury. In addition, as a developmental biologist my interest extends to understanding the relationship between the endogenous genetically-defined program and its final output in terms of biochemistry, physiology and mechanics, and how this can be modified by the environment, and manipulated for biotechnology. Thus, L3 projects link up with a variety of research projects running in my group ranging from stem cell function, leaf morphogenesis and EvoDevo studies, using methods including molecular biology, metabolomics, microscopy and bioinformatics- again, hands-on experience of techniques which underpin biological (and biomedical) research. L4 MBiolSci students are assigned a project closely tied to a PhD student or postdoc in the group, allowing them to gain real insight and one-to-one training in what research at the bench really involves.
Current Research Group (2010)
Postdoctoral Research Associates
Asuka Kuwabara (EU TOK Research Fellow)
Cell division and leaf form.
Carmen Della-Forca (EU TOK Research Fellow)
Physiological outcome of altering cell division patterns in leaves (with Paul Quick).
Anna Kasprzewska (EU Marie Curie Fellow)
MolCalm: Functional analysis of the leaf margin.
Robert Malinowski (Leverhulme Trust) (joint with Stephen Rolfe and Julie Scholes)
Cell division and the response to club root infection.
Jennifer Sloan (Centre for Low Carbon Futures)
Optimising a biorenewable foodstock (with Simon McQueen-Mason, CNAP, York)
Martin-Timothy O'Donohue (EU TOK Research Fellow)
Microarray analysis of stomatal development (with Julie Gray, Dave Beerling)
Cheryl Fleming (visiting researcher)
Technical Staff
Bob Keen (Lab Manager)
Heather Walker (Metabolomics and Analytical Lab)
Marion Bauch (Research Technician)
PhD Students
Caspar Chater (joint with David Beerling)
Environmental-driven developmental responses in Physcomitrella.
Yousef Al-Dlaigan
Manipulation of in vitro organogenesis and the cell cycle.
Hoe Han Goh (UoS Scholarship)
The role of expansins in leaf development.
Xiaojia Yin (Chinese government sponsored) (joint with Paul Quick)
Molecular analysis of cold acclimation
Chloe Steels (BBSRC Industrial CASE) (joint with Mike Burrell)
Imaging metabolism to a cellular resolution in the meristem
Supattra Narawattana (Thai government sponsored) (joint with Paul Quick)
The control and function of leaf thickness
Simon Wallace (NERC) (joint with David Beerling and Charles Wellman)
The evolution of the spore wall
Jennifer Dick (joint with Catherine Biggs, Chemical and Biological Engineering)
Manipulation of plants for bioremediation
Salwa Sedki Abd Elwahab (Egyptian government sponsored) (joint with Stephen Rolfe)
The control of radial root thickening
Ross Carter (BBSRC Industrial CASE) (joint with Jamie Hobbs, Physics and Astronomy)
Application of Atomic Force Microscopy to the plant cell wall
Publications (2001 to date)
Backhaus A, Kuwabara A, Bauch, M, Monk, N, Sanguinetti G and Fleming A. (2010) LeafProcessor: A new leaf phenotyping tool using contour bending energy and shape cluster analysis. New Phytologist 187, 251-261.
Bergmann, D. and Fleming, A. J (2010) From molecule to model, from environment to evolution: an integrated view of growth and development. Current Opin. Plant Biol. 13, 1-4.
Backhaus, A.; Kuwabara, A.; Fleming, A. and Seiffert, U. (2010) Validation of unsupervised clustering methods for leaf phenotype screening Proc. 18th European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning 18, 511-517.
Sloan, J., Backhaus, A., Malinowski, R., McQueen-Mason, S. and Fleming, A.J. (2009) Phased control of expansin activity during leaf development identifies a sensitivity window for expansin-mediated induction of leaf growth. Plant Physiology151, 1844-1854.
Braun, N., Wyrzykowska, J., Muller, P., David, K., Couch, D., Perrot-Rechenmann, C. and Fleming, A. J. (2008) Conditional repression of AUXIN BINDING PROTEIN1 reveals that it coordinates cell division and cell expansion during postembryonic shoot development in Arabidopsis and tobacco. Plant Cell 20: 2746-2762.
Lee,Y.P., Fleming, A. J. , Körner, C. and Meins (2008) Differential expression of the CBF pathway and cell cycle-related genes in Arabidopsis accessions in response to chronic low-temperature exposure. Plant Biology (published online 2008 10.1111/j.1438-8677.2008.00122.x).
Reinhardt, B., Haenggi, E., Mueller, S., Bauch, M., Wyrzykowska, J., Kerstetter, R., Poethig, S. and Fleming, A. J. (2007) Restoration of DWF4 expression to the leaf margin of a dwf4 mutant is sufficient to retore leaf shape but not size: the role of the margin in leaf development, Plant Journal 52, 1094-1104.
Beerling, D. and Fleming, A. J. (2007) Zimmermann's telome theory of megaphyll leaf evolution: a molecular and cellular critique. Current Opin. Plant Biol. 10, 4-12
Fleming, A. J. (2007) Cell cycle control during leaf development, In: Cell Cycle Control and Plant Development (Annual Plant Review) ed D. Inze. Blackwell Scientific.
Wyrzykowska, J., Schorderet, M., Pien, S., Gruissem, W. and Fleming, A. J. (2006) Induction of differentiation in the shoot apical meristem by transient overexpression of a retinoblastoma-related protein. Plant Physiol. 141: 1338-1348.
Fleming, A. J. (2006) Metabolic aspects of organogenesis in the shoot apical meristem. J. Expt. Bot. 57, 1863-1870.
Fleming A. J. (2006) Plant signalling: the inexorable rise of auxin. Trends Cell Biol. 16, 397-402.
Fleming, A. J. (2006) Commentary: Producing patterns in plants. New Phytologist 170, 641-644.
Fleming, A. J. (2006) Leaf initiation: the integration of growth and cell division. Plant Mol. Biol. 60, 793-803.
Fleming A. J. (2006) The integration of cell proliferation and growth in leaf morphogenesis. J. Plant Res. 119, 31-36.
Fleming, A. J. (2005) Formation of primordia and phyllotaxy. Curr. Opin. Plant Biol. 8, 53-58
Fleming, A. J. (2005) Tansley Review: The control of leaf development. New Phytologist. 166, 9-20
Fleming, A. J. (2005) The plant extracellular matrix and signalling, In: Intercellular communication in plants (ed., Fleming, A. J.) Blackwell Scientific.
Fleming, A. J. (2005) Cellular architecture- regulation of cell size, cell shape and organ initiation, In: Cellular Architecture (ed., Turnbull, C.) Blackwell Scientific.
Bariola, P.A., Retelska, D., Stasiak, A., Kammerer, R., Fleming, A., Hijri, M., Frank, S. and Farmer, E.E. (2004) Remorins form a novel family of coiled coil-forming oligomeric and filamentous proteins associated with apical, vascular and embryonic tissues in plants. Plant Mol. Biol. 55, 579-594
Kende H., Bradford, K. T., Brummell. D. A., Cho, H. T., Cosgrove, D. J., Fleming, A.J., Gehring, C., Lee, Y., McQueen-Mason, S., Rose, J.K.C. and Voesenek, L.A.C.J. (2004) Nomenclature for members of the expansin superfamily of genes and proteins. Plant Mol. Biol. 55, 311-314
Wyrykowska, J. and Fleming, A. J. (2003) Cell division pattern influences gene expression in the shoot apical meristem. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 5561-5566.
Fleming, A. J. (2003) The molecular regulation of leaf form. Plant Biology 5, 341-349.
Wyrzykowska, J., Pien, S., Shen, W. H. and Fleming, A. J. (2002) Manipulation of leaf shape by modulation of cell division. Development 129, 957-964.
Schipper, O., Schaefer, D., Reski, R. and Fleming, A. J. (2002) Expansins in the bryophyte Physcomitrella patens. Plant Molecular Biology 50, 789-802.
Li, Y., Darley, C. P., Ongaro, V., Fleming, A., Schipper, O., Baldauf, S. L. and McQueen-Mason, S. M. (2002) Plant expansins are a complex multigene family with an ancient evolutionary origin. Plant Physiology 128, 854-864.
Van den Brûle, S., Müller, A., Fleming, A. J. and Smart, C. C. (2002) The ABC transporter SpTur2 confers resistance to the antifungal diterpene sclareol. The Plant Journal 30, 649-662.
Fleming A. J. (2002) Plant mathemetics and Fibonacci´s flowers. Nature 418, 723.
Fleming, A. J. (2002) The mechanism of leaf morphogenesis. Planta 216, 17-22.
Pien, S., Wryzykowska, J., McQueen-Mason, S., Smart, C. and Fleming, A. J. (2001) Local induction of expansin is sufficient to induce the entire process of leaf development and to modify leaf shape. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 11812-11817.
Pien, S., Wryzykowska, J. and Fleming, A. J. (2001) Novel markers for early leaf development indicate spatial regulation of carbohydrate metabolism within the apical meristem. The Plant Journal 25, 663-674.
Hänggi, E. and Fleming, A. J. (2001) Sucrose synthase expression pattern in young maize leaves: implications for phloem transport. Planta 214, 326-329.
Reidy, B., Nosberger, J. and Fleming, A. J. (2001) Differential expression of XET-related genes in the leaf elongation zone of Festuca pratensis. Journal of Experimental Botany 52, 1847-1856.
Reidy, B., McQueen-Mason, S., Nosberger, J. and Fleming, A. J. (2001) Differential expression of alpha and beta expansin genes in the elongating leaf of Festuca pratensis. Plant Molecular Biology 46, 491-504.