GM Science Review Panel - Members' Interests

Professor Dianna Bowles

Dianna Bowles trained in plant sciences, gaining a PhD in biochemistry from Cambridge and undertaking research in a variety of European universities and institutes, before starting an academic career at the University of Leeds, and gaining a Personal Chair in plant biochemistry in 1990. She relocated to the University of York in 1994, founded The Plant Laboratory and recently has established and directs a new research centre, CNAP, which specialises in plant and microbial sciences, discovering genes of high utility from the biosphere and using them to solve problems for industry, society and the environment. She has worked closely with a number of UK Government Departments involved in bioscience, overseas development, agriculture and fundamental research (DTI/OST, ODA, MAFF/DEFRA, BBSRC) and currently supervises a personal research group using genomics to analyse a large family of plant enzymes. She founded and was Editor-in-Chief of The Plant Journal for eleven years, becoming increasingly interested in public awareness of science issues and explaining molecular sciences to schools and the public.

She started her own sheep flock of Herdwicks in 1990 and in 2001 founded Heritage GeneBank (HGB) to help sheep breeds at threat of extinction from the epidemic of Foot and Mouth Disease. HGB has evolved into The Sheep Trust, a new charity focussing on helping traditional UK breeds and breeders. She is on the Council of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, is President of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders Association, and is on national committees for the conservation of farm animal genetic resources and the development of a UK agribusiness strategy, as well as on the Government-Industry Forum on Non-Food Uses of Crops, at which her responsibilities include how to discover plant-based compounds that can act as alternatives to pesticides and antibiotics and how to add value to sheep wool.