Hello!

My name's Angus, I'm a PhD student in the Talbot Group over at The Sainsbury Laboratory (Norwich, UK).

Academic History

  • University of Birmingham

    MSci Biological Sciences

    2019 – 2023

    My Master's research was supervised by Dr. Megan McDonald, focusing on the Starship transposon Sanctuary.

  • Gregor Mendel Institute

    VBC Summer School student

    Jul – Aug 2022

    I joined Dr. Arturo Marí-Ordóñez as part of the Vienna BioCenter Summer School focusing on transposon silencing in Duckweeds.

  • The Sainsbury Laboratory

    PhD

    2024 – 2027

    My PhD research is supervised by Prof. Nick Talbot, focusing on effectors within the Magnaporthe oryzae phytopathogen.

Academic Output

Please see below for my academic output. The below list only shows presentations done within the past year, for a full list of presentations please see my CV.

* indicates co-authorship.

Publications

  1. Tagirdzhanova G., Scharnagl K., Sahu N., Yan X., Bucknell A. H., Bentham A. R., Jégousse C., Ament-Velàsquez S. L., Brännström I. O., Johannesson H., MacLean D., Talbot N. J. (2024). Complexity of the lichen symbiosis revealed by metagenome and transcriptome analysis of Xanthoria parietina. Current Biology. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.041.

  2. Bucknell, A. H., and McDonald, M. C. (2023). That’s no moon, it’s a Starship: Giant transposons driving fungal horizontal gene transfer. Molecular Microbiology, 120, 555–563. doi: 10.1111/mmi.15118.

Pre-prints

  1. Bucknell, A. H.*, Wilson, H. M.*, Gonçalves do Santos, K. C., Simpfendorfer, S., Milgate, A., Germain, H., Solomon, P. S., Bentham, A. R., and McDonald, M. C. (2024). Sanctuary: A Starship transposon facilitating the movement of the virulence factor ToxA in fungal wheat pathogens. biorXiv. doi: 10.1101/2024.03.04.583430.

Oral presentation unless otherwise specified.

Presentations

  1. Bucknell, A. H. (2024). Developing new-to-nature protein binders for the M. oryzae pathosystem APH Forum, 5 December, Norwich (GB).

  2. Bucknell, A. H. (2024). Using structural homology predictions to infer biological function of effector proteins during plant infections. NRPDTP Summer Conference, 20 June, Norwich (GB).

  3. Bucknell, A. H. (2024). From one small step to a giant leap between fungi. Pint of Science Festival, 15 May, Norwich (GB).

  4. Bucknell, A. H., Bentham, A. R., Yan, X., and Talbot, N. J. (2024). Finding function through form: predicting effector function in the blast fungus through structural biology. [Poster]. Fungal Genetics Conference, 15 March, Asilomar Conference Grounds (CA, US). doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10793245.

  5. Bucknell, A. H. (2024). In-silico characterisation of Magnaporthe effector proteins. Magnafest, 12 March, Asilomar Conference Grounds (CA, US).

Science Communication

Alongside traditional forms of academic output, I value science communication to the general public. Currently, I do this primarily through public engagement talks.

My PhD is being completed at The Sainsbury Laboratory via the Norwich Research Park Doctoral Training Partnership (NRPDTP). The NRPDTP is funded via the UKRI BBSRC grant BB/T008717/1.