A tiny weed with huge potential has prompted University of Queensland PhD candidate and 2020 Charlie Perkins Scholarship winner Audrey McInnerney to head to the UK’s University of Cambridge.
The Indigenous doctoral researcher will take time out from her UQ studies on soybean genetics later this year to work towards a Master of Philosophy in Plant Biology at Cambridge’s Sainsbury Laboratory, negotiating her travel plans amidst the current global pandemic.
Ms McInnerney said the weed-like Arabidopsis Thaliana was one of the world’s most studied plants because it underpins a molecular understanding of developmental processes in other plants.
“I will be involved in identifying new genes involved in Arabidopsis shoot branching, and I hope to bring that knowledge back to UQ to benefit my study of soybean nodulation genetics,” Ms McInnerney said.
