Research Interests

The natural sciences have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. However, during the first years of my biology degree, I discovered how amazing plants are. Throughout evolution, they have developed an extraordinary array of biochemical reactions and signalling networks that allow them to survive in a changing environment despite being unable to “run away” from it. In particular, I am interested in how plants defend themselves against stressful situations, for example when they are attacked by pathogenic microbes.

Research Interests

I’m particularly interested in how early diverging land plant lineages, originating over 450 million years ago, evolved integrated developmental and immune mechanisms to mediate interactions with symbiotic microbes and pathogenic organisms.

Research interests

One of the questions that has always fascinated me is how plants, as immobile organisms, have managed to adapt and cope with everything around them without being able to move as other living organisms do. Faced with this apparent constraint, plants have evolved strategies to interact with their environment and survive, allowing them to colonize the land long before animals.

I graduated in 2024 with an Integrated Master’s degree in Biology from the University of York. During my undergraduate studies, I developed a strong interest in plant ecophysiology, specifically investigating how common wheat responds to heat stress and how bean plants alter their volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions under drought conditions.

Research Interests

In January 2025, I joined the Schornack group as a postdoc and am investigating plant-microbe interactions using the non-vascular plant Marchantia polymorpha.

Microbial interactions have significantly influenced plant diversity, and both beneficial and detrimental interactions continue to be crucial in agriculture. The complexity of these interactions fascinates me, and I am excited about the impact of this research area.

Hi, I'm Isaac Coven. I graduated from the University of Bristol in 2023 with a BSc in Biological Science. Currently, I'm pursuing an MPhil at the University of Cambridge in the Biological Sciences (Crop Science) programme. As part of my course, I'll be working at the Sainsbury Laboratory for a term, as a part of the Shornack research group. My focus is on exploring the potential of SCAR gene knockout mutants for improved disease resistance in barley, concentrating on the effects on pathogenic and beneficial symbiotic interactions.

Research Interests