Photosynthesis, Evolution, Guitars | Professor @OxfordBiology | Co-founder & CSO @WildBioscience
Oxford, England
Joined August 2013
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Rubisco is not stuck.
Its kinetics, and photosynthesis, have been continually improving throughout land plant evolution.
👉 pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.23…
Steve Kelly retweeted
Suffolk-based F1 Seed has been acquired by Wild Bioscience.
F1 Seed was built by veteran wheat breeder Bill Angus, while Wild Bio was founded by @RossWHen and @Steve__Kelly.
The deal makes Wild Bio Britain's first fully independent, end-to-end precision-breeding wheat business.
Most of the UK's wheat genetics have historically been controlled by subsidiaries of foreign multinationals, leaving more than half of domestic wheat varieties vulnerable to yellow rust, a serious fungal disease.
F1 Seed already has six wheat varieties on the market, and its pipeline accounts for 12% of the new varieties entering UK national trials this year.
The acquisition follows Wild Bio's €51m Series A, bringing its total funding to €65.8m.
Steve Kelly retweeted
OrthoFinder: improved phylogenetic orthology inference with enhanced accuracy and scalability | Nature Methods nature.com/articles/s41592-0…
Steve Kelly retweeted
Please share! 📢
Are you a plant or microbial scientist that is passionate about global innovation in sustainable agriculture? 🚨
We have a number of exciting job openings in nitrogen fixation at EIT ‼️
Find out more and apply here 👉 eit.org/careers
Steve Kelly retweeted
GLADE: Accurate inference of Gains, Losses, Ancestral genomes, and Duplication Events for comparative genomics biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… #biorxiv_evobio
Steve Kelly retweeted
FastSpeciesTree: Fast and Scalable Species tree Inference biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… #biorxiv_evobio
OrthoFinder has been cited more than 10,000 times 🤯. Don’t think @David__Emms or I ever dreamed it would be so useful to so many people. Looking forward to sharing the latest updates soon!
Steve Kelly retweeted
🌾Powering the next generation of sustainable agriculture
We’re thrilled to lead a $60M Series A round for Wild Bioscience, alongside Oxford Science Enterprises, Braavos Investment Advisers and the University of Oxford - accelerating the development of next-generation crop varieties to power more resilient, sustainable food systems.
Founded by Professor Steven Kelly, Head of the Plant Biology Institute at EIT and Dr Ross Hendron, Wild Bio is pioneering a data-driven approach that uses AI and precision breeding to enhance crop productivity, climate resilience and sustainability.
Together, we’re:
🌍Unlocking nature’s evolutionary intelligence to improve global food security
🧬Translating cutting-edge Oxford research from lab to field
🌿Helping farmers adapt to a changing climate through smarter crop science
This investment marks a milestone for Oxford’s innovation ecosystem, representing a shared commitment to scaling science that matters.
👉 Learn more about how EIT and Wild Bio are shaping the future of sustainable agriculture: link.eit.org/EITInvestsInWil…
#EIT #EITOxford #WildBio #AgriTech #Sustainability #Innovation #AI #FoodSecurity #SustainableAgriculture #PrecisionBreeding #Climate
Steve Kelly retweeted
@TinaSchreier has been awarded an @ERC_Research Starting Grant for research into the cell biology of C4 photosynthesis 🌱
Tina’s project will explore the cell biology that leads to the formation of specialised bundle sheath cells in C4 plants 👇
bit.ly/4mWFGhh
ALT Sorghum cells cross section showing chloroplasts
Steve Kelly retweeted
New OA Article: "RETICULATA1 is a plastid-localized basic amino acid transporter" rdcu.be/eBUNM
RE1 enables basic aa exchange across the plastid inner envelope. Loss-of-function mutants reveal its essential role in aa homeostasis, plant development and seed production.
Steve Kelly retweeted
Excited to share that I’ll soon be joining @irnasa_csic as #newPI! And I couldn’t imagine a better start than with a project that has just been selected for funding by @AgEInves @CienciaGob. Very grateful for the support & looking forward to keep working on #bacterialregulation!!
📢El #IRNASA-CSIC logra dos nuevos proyectos de Generación de #Conocimiento para estudiar la espiga del #trigo y las bacterias del #suelo.
👨🔬👩🔬¡Enhorabuena a los investigadores principales @rubenvicper y @carmen_agro!
➡️ irnasa.csic.es/el-irnasa-csi…
Steve Kelly retweeted
For over a decade, anti-GMO activists demanded long-term studies in mammals.
Not mice.
Not rats.
Primates.
Well... scientists did just that.
And the results are in.
Let’s talk about a 7-year feeding study in macaques.
🧵 1/👇
Steve Kelly retweeted
Exploring the diversity of the CO2-concentrating mechanism (CCM) in different C4 subtypes biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/… #biorxiv_plants
Steve Kelly retweeted
We have a new version of OrthoFinder:
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Faster scaling to larger species sets, phylogenetically resolved orthogroups, reduced RAM usage.
Thanks to @dr_belcher, Yi Liu & Jonathan Holmes who have joined the team, and as ever OrthoFinder's PI @Steve__Kelly!
Steve Kelly retweeted
OrthoFinder just dropped a major update
It’s faster, more accurate, and ready for thousands of genomes
Let’s break it down (1/10)
github.com/OrthoFinder/Ortho…
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
It has been a while… but an updated, faster & more accurate version of OrthoFinder is now out!
Scales to thousands of species on conventional compute resources with higher accuracy than ever before and the same data rich fully phylogenetic outputs
👉biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Steve Kelly retweeted
As part of our 100-year celebrations, we would like to hear stories from you on how @Co_Biologists has impacted your careers. Send us your message at bit.ly/3PL5CO6
Steve Kelly retweeted
Researchers in @OxfordBiology and Wild Bioscience Ltd are to receive backing of a £6.7 million grant from @ARIA_research to pioneer a new synthetic biology approach which promises to improve yields in potato and wheat.
Read more ⬇️ #OxfordClimate
Steve Kelly retweeted
We are excited to be launching the next phase of our Fast & Fair peer review initiative: offering high-quality peer review within 7 working days. #fastandfairpeerreview
Read the Editorial by EiC Daniel Gorelick at: bit.ly/4kYD1mL
ALT Fast & Fair peer review A new initiative offering high-quality peer review within 7 working days of submission Biology Open
Wellcome to the 30’s … the 20’s didn’t last long
🏆📈🏆 FIRST TIME #CO2 SURPASSES 430 🏆📈🏆 430.60 ppm is the HIGHEST EVER CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere as of March 7, 2025 🏆 Up 5.24 ppm from 425.36 ppm a year ago 🏆 #NOAA Mauna Loa Obervatory data & graphic: buff.ly/FCkDhVp 🏆 Daily CO2.Earth records at: buff.ly/LcWvKsr
