Madelaine Bartlett is a Group Leader at the Sainsbury Laboratory and an Associate Member of the Department of Plant Sciences, both within the University of Cambridge. She joined Cambridge in 2024 following a decade at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she progressed through Assistant, Associate to full Professor.
She completed her postdoctoral research at Brigham Young University with Professor Clinton Whipple (2010–2013), focusing on plant developmental genetics, and earned her PhD in Plant Biology from the University of California, Berkeley (2005–2010) under the supervision of Professor Chelsea Specht. Her research explores the evolution and development of plant form, integrating molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, and comparative developmental approaches.
Between 2021 and 2025, Madelaine received several honours recognising her contributions to research and academia, including the Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award from the UMass College of Natural Sciences in 2023, and the M. Rhoades Early-Career Maize Genetics Award from the Maize Genetics Cooperation in 2022.
Research Areas
Madelaine Bartlett investigates how conserved developmental genes generate the extraordinary diversity of plant form. Her work focuses on uncovering the molecular mechanisms that drive morphological evolution—particularly in flowers, the source of all fruits and grains and on applying these insights to enable more predictable, knowledge-guided crop engineering. By integrating evolutionary biology, molecular genetics, and comparative development, her research connects genetic change to morphological innovation and explores principles that can shape future plant design.
Madelaine’s lab has revealed surprising roles for deeply conserved genes in the evolution of floral structures, including independent recruitment of leaf-patterning genes in awn development and new functions for axillary meristem regulators in maize unisexual flowers. Her group has also advanced understanding of molecular evolution, showing that domains of key developmental receptor-like kinases evolve modularly and contributing to the discovery of thousands of ancient conserved non-coding sequences (CNSs). Editing these CNSs has demonstrated strong impacts on yield traits and developmental processes, offering powerful tools for guiding crop evolution and synthetic biology.
Her work also engages with the cultural context of plant science, including collaborations on the history of research on plant sex and on the societal dimensions of genome editing.
Madelaine is using grasses as a model to uncover the molecular changes that shaped plant form and to test how these changes alter development. Working closely with collaborators at the Sainsbury Laboratory, her research group aims to translate evolutionary principles into strategies for rewiring and improving plants for the future.
Recent Publications
*Rogers, C.D., Amemiya, C., Arur, S., Babonis, L., Barresi, M., Bartlett, M.E., Behringer, R., Benham-Pyle, B., Bergmann, D., Blackman, B., et al. (2024) Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology, Development, 151(3),dev202342. doi: 10.1242/dev.202342 12 February 2024
*Gallagher, J.P., Man, J., Chiaramida, A., Rozza, I.K., Patterson, E.L., Powell, M.M., Schrager-Lavelle, A., Multani, D.S., Meeley, R.B. and *Bartlett, M.E. (2023) GRASSY TILLERS1 (GT1) and SIX-ROWED SPIKE1 (VRS1) homologs share conserved roles in growth repression, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(51), e2311961120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2311961120 14 December 2023
Man, J., Harrington, T.A.,, Lally, K., *Bartlett, M.E. (2023) Asymmetric evolution of protein domains in the leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase family of plant signaling proteins, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 40(10), msad220. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msad220 3 October 2023
Higgins, I., Huang, K., Rozza, I., Thompson, B. and *Bartlett, M.E. (2023) The shoot apical meristem: a tree’s best bud, Frontiers for Young Minds, 11, 965617. doi: 10.3389/frym.2023.965617 17 April 2023
*Subramaniam, B., Bartlett, M.E. (2023) Re-imagining Reproduction: The Queer Possibilities of Plants, Integrative and Comparative Biology, 63(4), 946-959. doi: 10.1093/icb/icad012 6 April 2023
*Patterson, E., Richardson, A. and Bartlett, M.E. (2023) Pushing the boundaries of organ identity: Homology of the grass lemma, American Journal of Botany, 110(4),e16161. doi:10.1002/ajb2.16161
6 April 2023
*Bartlett, M.E., Moyers, B., Man, J., Subramaniam, B. and Makunga, N.P. (2022) The power and perils of de novo domestication using genome editing, Annual Review of Plant Biology, 74, 727-750.
doi: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-053122-030653 22 November 2022
Xiao, Y., Guo, J., Dong, Z., Richardson, A., Patterson, E., Mangrum, E., Bybee, S., Bertolini, E., Bartlett, M.E., Chuck, G., et al. (2022) Boundary domain genes were recruited to suppress bract growth and promote branching in maize, Science Advances, 8(24), eabm6835. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abm6835
15 June 2022
Huang, W., Zhang, L., Columbus, J.T., Hu, Y., Zhao, Y., Tang, L., Guo, Z., Chen, W., McKain, M., Bartlett, M.E. Huang, C., Li, D., Ge, S. and *Ma, H. (2022) A well-supported nuclear phylogeny of Poaceae and implications for the evolution of C4 photosynthesis, Molecular Plant, 15(4), 755-777.
doi: 10.1016/j.molp.2022.01.015 4 April 2022
Klein, H., Gallagher, J., Demesa-Arevalo, E., Abraham-Juárez, M.J., Heeney, M., Feil, R., Lunn, J.E., Xiao, Y., Chuck, G., Whipple, C., Jackson, D.J. and *Bartlett, M.E. (2022) Recruitment of an ancient branching program to suppress carpel development in maize flowers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 19(2), e2115871119. doi:10.1073/pnas.2115871119 7 January 2022
Hendelman, A., Zebell, S., Rodriguez-Leal, D., Dukler, N., Robitaille, G., Wu, X., Kostyun, J., Tal, L., Wang, P., Bartlett, M.E., Eshed, Y., *Efroni, I. and *Lippman, Z.B. (2021) Conserved pleiotropy of an ancient plant homeobox gene uncovered by cis-regulatory dissection, Cell, 184(7), 1724-1739.e16. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.001 1 April 2021
Liu, L., Gallagher, J., Demesa Arevalo, E., Chen, R., Skopelitis, T., Wu, Q., Bartlett, M.E. and Jackson, D. (2021) Enhancing grain yield traits by CRISPR/Cas9 promoter editing of maize CLE genes, Nature Plants, 7, 287-294. doi: 10.1038/s41477-021-00858-5 22 February 2021
*corresponding author
