Profile

I love plants and animals! I think we need to understand the world around us in order to properly conserve it and allow it to flourish. I grew up in London and have lived here my whole life. I work at Kew Gardens and study plant DNA.

I love the outdoors and go on long walks around my local parks looking for wildlife. I enjoy looking out for birds and trying to learn the songs they sing to identify them. I think I know a lot more about animals that I do about plants (even though I work at a botanic garden!).

I’m a research assistant and I work in a lab. I’m a part of the Darwin Tree of Life project which aims to sequence the genomes of all native UK flora and fauna (plants and animals).

My job focusses on the plant side of things.

Before a plant get sent off to have its genome sequenced, some material comes to me and I use it to estimate the size of it’s genome (the amount DNA that is found in a nucleus). This is called genome sizing and I do this using flow cytometry. This let’s the other scientists know how much DNA there is in a cell and how much they will need to sequence.