When Professor David Day flew in from Adelaide earlier this year for a retreat involving scientists from The University of Western Australia, it was almost like a family reunion, with him as the ‘great-grandfather’.

David is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology (PEB) and, in effect, is responsible for cultivating a crop of eminent plant researchers who now all work with PEB.

Promising young UWA researcher and avid surfer Tiago Tomaz has recently published the discovery that removing a protein called mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase (mMDH) from plant leaves can increase levels of vitamin C and have large effects on plant growth.

A new study by researchers at The University of Western Australia has provided a unique insight into how the same protein plays different roles in plant and animal cells.

One of Plant Energy Biology’s recently graduated PhD students, Dr Kamel Hammani, has been honoured with a special commendation by UWA for his research into plant proteins.

Kamel’s research characterised six previously undiscovered pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins. PPR proteins are of great interest due to their ability to change the way that a gene is expressed.