Dr. Ricardo Randall
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology
University of Zürich
Zollikerstrasse 107
CH-8008 Zürich
ricardo.randall@botinst.uzh.ch

phone:
+41 (0)44 63 48265
fax:
+41 (0)44 63 48204
Research Interests
Keywords
Education
Previous Positions and Research Experience
List of Publications

[ print version ]

Research Interests

I am interested in the the molecular mechanisms that lead to developmental phase transitions in plants. In my PhD I looked into signalling mechanisms stimulating cell proliferation to initiate secondary growth in Arabidopsis roots, a process that can be used to model secondary growth in trees. More recently I have become more interested in advanced imaging tools and using these not only to characterise phenotypes but also to quantify dynamically the underlying cellular processes. Here at UZH I will use such tools to quantify chromatin structural changes that are involved in the transition from dark- to light-growth.


Keywords

developmental biology, image processing, microscopy, plant genetics, plant signalling, chromatin biology


Education

2010 - 2014 PhD in laboratory of Jim Murray at Cardiff University (supervised by Jim Murray and Walter Dewitte), investigating the control of the cell cycle during plant developmental processes, especially in secondary growth in the root cambium. 4-year PhD funded by the BBSRC (UK) including a stay at a key collaborator's (Yka Heliarutta) lab in Helsinki funded by the Company of Biologists.
2008 - 2009 Industrial training year at the National Medical Research Institute in Mill Hill, London. Supervised by Rita Cha and funded by the MRC (UK) to investigate the molecular causes of double-stranded DNA breaks in budding yeast.
2006 - 2010 Genetics BSc at Cardiff University. Final year project in laboratory of Jim Murray, characterising the roles of D-type cyclins and cell cycle inhibiting-KRPs in seed dormancy, after-ripening and germination. Supervised by Jeroen Nieuwland.

Previous Positions and Research Experience

2016 - 2017 Postdoc in Giovanni Sena's Laboratory of Plant Morphogenesis at Imperial College London, UK. Development and use of a light sheet microscope for live imaging of cell division in Arabidopsis roots.
2015 - 2016 Postdoc at the University of York, UK. Supervised by Ian Graham and Thilo Winzer. Investigating the evolution of opioid biosynthesis in opium poppies.

List of Publications

Dumur T, Duncan S, Graumann K, Desset S, Randall RS, Mittelsten Scheid O, Prodanov D, Tatout C and Baroux C. (2019) Probing the 3D architecture of the plant nucleus with microscopy approaches: challenges and solutions. Nucleus, 10:1, 181-212.
Link

Baesso P, Randall RS, Sena G. (2017) Light sheet fluorescence microscopy for long-term imaging of Arabidopsis root development, Meth. Mol. Biol., Springer, In press

Nieuwland J, Stamm P, Wen B, Randall RS, Murray JAH, Bassel G. (2016) Re-induction of the cell cycle in the Arabidopsis post-embryonic root meristem is ABA-insensitive, GA-dependent and repressed by KRP6. Sci. Rep. 6:23586; doi: 10.1038/srep23586

Randall et al. (2015) AINTEGUMENTA and the D-type cyclin CYCD3;1 independently contribute to petal size control in Arabidopsis: evidence for organ size compensation being an emergent rather than a determined property. J Exp Bot. 66(13):3991-4000

Randall et al. (2015) AINTEGUMENTA and the D-type cyclin CYCD3;1 regulate root secondary growth and respond to cytokinins, Biol Open doi:10.1242/bio.013128