Research projects

Applications are now closed for 2026/27

Projects for 2027/28 entry have not yet been confirmed. They will be advertised here in October 2026 for entry in September/October 2027.

Nicotiana benthamiana plants expressing the Ruby construct (encodes enzymes of betalain biosynthesis).

Projects will be focused on addressing major global challenges aligned with the UK’s National Engineering Biology Programme:

Clean growth (e.g. photosynthetic biomanufacturing of proteins and natural products)
Resilient food systems (e.g. engineering of agricultural traits such as defence and photosynthesis)
Environmental sustainability (e.g. phytoremediation of rare earth metals)
Technologies for engineering plants (e.g. development of new tools for gene editing/ large-scale screening/ synthetic control).

The projects advertised in 2026 were:

Re-engineering photoprotection by concerted optimization of sensor and quencher

Programming green algae for the production of omega-3 fatty acids and wax

Engineering plant rubisco enzymes through high-throughput enzyme assays and cryo-EM

Engineering Plant Cell Size and Material Properties using Fungal Proteins

High-throughput screening of Rubisco variants to enhance plant productivity

Optimisation of nanocomplexes for the delivery of RNA to plants

Engineering plant immune responses

Year-Round Beet: engineering a controllable flowering switch for reliable seed production with zero bolting in commercial fields

SynProm: Fast, modular spatio-temporal transcriptional reporters for plants

Designer lettuce: re-wiring defence networks to engineer disease resistance

AI-Guided Design of RNA-structure-based Antiviral Systems for treating plant virus in sugar beets

A toolkit to engineer root-soil interactions

Developing genetic circuits to control and tune gene expression in mesophyll cells for programmable traits for sustainable agriculture

Developing New Strategies for Rapid Elucidation of Bioactive Pathways from Plant Biosynthetic Gene Clusters

Redesigning the Meiotic Map: Chromosome Engineering as a Tool to Control Genetic Recombination

Collaborative projects (CASE)

We fund a number of projects that are collaborative with industry partners addressing industry needs. These are known as CASE projects.

CASE projects will be prioritised during recruitment. The financial and in-kind contributions required from industry partners vary depending on the size of the company and the host university.

Please get in touch through plant-biodesign-network@york.ac.uk if you are interested in finding out more.

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