Department of Biology

Career:

1999 - Current. Head of CNAP Metabolic profiling. Department of Biology, University of York

1998 - 1999. Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Institute of Biochemistry and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow

1998. � PhD in Botany. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

1992. � MSc (Hons) in Botany. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

1990. � BSc in Botany. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Research:

My research interests centre on small molecule measurements and metabolomics in plants and thus span the fields of plant biology, chemistry, and bioinformatics. My activities focus on novel method development and integration between these fields and are tailored to underpin gene and pathway discovery in plant functional genomics. My expertise is in the development of screening pipelines for small molecule extraction, isolation and derivatization where necessary, chromatographic separation (liquid and gas chromatography), and detection including (but not limited to) mass spectrometry. I also write novel algorithms in R to facilitate mining complex metabolomics data.

Selected Publications:

Winzer T, Gazda V, He Z, Kaminski F, Kern M, Larson TR, Li Y, Meade F, Teodor R, Vaistij FE, Walker C, Bowser TA, Graham IA. (2012) A Papaver somniferum 10-gene cluster for synthesis of the anticancer alkaloid noscapine. Science 336: 1704-1708.

Kuhl C, Tautenhahn R, B�ttcher C, Larson TR, Neumann S. (2012) CAMERA: an integrated strategy for compound spectra extraction and annotation of liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry data sets. Anal. Chem. 84: 283-289.

Brown AP, Kroon JTM, Swarbreck D, Febrer M, Larson TR, Graham IA, Caccamo M, Slabas AR. (2012). Tissue-specific whole transcriptome sequencing in castor, directed at understanding triacylglycerol lipid biosynthetic pathways. PLoS ONE 7 (e30100).

Hernandez ML, Whitehead L, He Z, Gazda V, Gilday A, Kozhevnikova E, Vaistij FE, Larson TR, Graham IA. (2012). A cytosolic acyltransferase contributes to triacylglycerol synthesis in sucrose-rescued Arabidopsis seed oil catabolism mutants. Plant Physiol. 160: 215-225.

Dave A, Hern�ndez ML, He Z, Andriotis VM, Vaistij FE, Larson TR, Graham IA. (2011) 12-oxo-phytodienoic acid accumulation during seed development represses seed germination in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell. 23: 583-599.

Ara�jo WL, Ishizaki K, Nunes-Nesi A, Larson TR, Tohge T, Krahnert I, Witt S, Obata T, Schauer N, Graham IA, Leaver CJ, Fernie AR (2010) Identification of the 2-hydroxyglutarate and isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenases as alternative electron donors linking lysine catabolism to the electron transport chain of Arabidopsis mitochondria. Plant Cell 22: 1549-1563.

Scott IM, Vermeer CP, Liakata M, Corol DI, Ward JL, Lin W, Johnson HE, Whitehead L, Kular B, Baker JM, Walsh S, Dave A, Larson TR, Graham IA, Wang TL, King RD, Draper J, Beale MH. (2010) Enhancement of plant metabolite fingerprinting by machine learning. Plant Physiol. 153: 1506-1520.

Graham IA, Besser K, Blumer S, Branigan CA, Czechowski T, Elias L, Guterman I, Harvey D, Isaac PG, Khan AM, Larson TR, Li Y, Pawson T, Penfield T, Rae AM, Rathbone DA, Reid S, Ross J, Smallwood MF, Segura V, Townsend T, Vyas D, Winzer T, Bowles D (2010) The genetic map of Artemisia annua L. identifies loci affecting yield of the antimalarial drug artemisinin. Science 327: 328-331.

Larson TR, Edgell T, Byrne J, Dehesh K, Graham IA (2002) Acyl CoA profiles of transgenic plants that accumulate medium-chain fatty acids indicate inefficient storage lipid synthesis in developing oilseeds. Plant J. 32: 519-527.

Larson TR, Graham IA. (2001) Technical Advance: a novel technique for the sensitive quantification of acyl CoA esters from plant tissues. Plant J. 25: 115-125.