The Sainsbury Laboratory

We favour daring, collaborative, long-term research and value scientific integrity through open science and transparency.

We deploy the latest technologies to combat plant diseases and accelerate breeding.

Our discoveries translate to scientific solutions that tackle crop losses caused by existing and emerging plant diseases, particularly in low-income countries.

The Sainsbury Laboratory provides an outstanding and inclusive training environment that prepares talented postgraduate students, postdoctoral scientists, and early career group leaders to excel in their careers.

Our alumni continue to make ground-breaking discoveries that address real-world challenges.

Research topics at The Sainsbury Laboratory include

plant disease resistance genes
the biology of pathogen effector proteins
innate immune recognition in plants
signalling and cellular changes during plant-microbe interactions
plant and pathogen genomics
and biotechnological approaches to crop disease resistance.

The Sainsbury Laboratory is supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the University of East Anglia and a BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme Grant in Advancing Plant Health (BB/Y002997/1) in partnership with the John Innes Centre. Funding is also awarded to the laboratory in the form of competitive grants awarded by BBSRC, ERC, a range of charities and philanthropic donations and, for some research programmes, by commercial companies.

Each of our scientific groups have projects that take fundamental scientific discoveries from the laboratory to the field with the aim of reducing worldwide losses to crop diseases. Current projects include the discovery, engineering and deployment of novel immune receptors in crops, as well as genome editing tools that will enable the generation of novel alleles for crop improvement.