The New Phytologist Tansley Medal 2024 – Matthew Naish

Abstract

We are delighted to announce that the 2024 New Phytologist Tansley Medal for Excellence in Plant Science has been awarded to Matthew Naish. The Tansley Medal is awarded annually in recognition of an outstanding contribution to research in plant science by an individual in the early stages of their career (Slater & Dolan, 2022, 2023a, 2023b and references within).

Matthew is a Broodbank Research Fellow, in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he is working on ‘Centromere engineering as an emerging tool for doubled haploid breeding’. Matthew and his colleagues have made numerous discoveries about the organisation of sequences in the plant genome, and the role of chromatin (the protein–DNA complex that packages DNA) in these structural processes. Matthew developed approaches to generate complete sequences of Arabidopsis centromeres (Naish et al., 2021). Analysis of these sequences showed that centromeres comprise tandem repeats of short DNA sequences (satellites) that are periodically invaded by transposons. These transposons degrade over time resulting in the homogenisation of the sequences and the reestablishment of the repetitive satellites. Given the stochastic nature of such events, it was not a surprise when Matthew discovered that each chromosome is defined by its own, unique, satellite ‘signature’. Matthew's Tansley insight ‘Bridging the gap: unravelling plant centromeres in the telomere-to-telomere era’ summarises the state of our understanding of sequence organisation and epigenetic control of centromeres in plants (Naish, 2024a, this issue, pp. 000–000).

More information on Matthew and his research can be found in the accompanying Profile article (Naish, 2024b, this issue, pp. 000–000).

Each year, judging the Tansley Medal gives us cause to reflect on the discoveries being made by early career researchers and how this is advancing fundamental plant science research and its applications for societal benefit. This year's cohort of talented researchers was no exception, and we are delighted to also offer our congratulations to five outstanding runners up:

Xuan Du, Professor, College of Life Sciences and Oceanography, Shenzhen University, China. Tansley insight: ‘The cellular RNA-dependent RNA polymerases in plants’ (Du, 2024, this issue, pp. 000–000).

Julia K. Green, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Science, University of Arizona, USA. Tansley insight: ‘The intricacies of vegetation responses to changing moisture conditions’ (Green, 2024, this issue, pp. 000–000).

Bochen Jiang, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences & Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Tansley insight: ‘Light-induced cryptochrome 2 liquid–liquid phase separation and mRNA methylation’ (Jiang, 2024, this issue, pp. 000–000).

Shan Li, Professor, College of Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, China. Tansley insight: ‘Is auxin the key to improve crop nitrogen use efficiency for greener agriculture?’ (S. Li, 2024, this issue, pp. 000–000).

Yue Li, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Tansley insight: ‘Climate feedback from plant physiological responses to increasing atmospheric CO₂ in Earth system models’ (Y. Li, 2024, this issue, pp.000–000).

The Tansley Medal competition is an annual event, with applications due by the 1 November each year. Whilst we write this Editorial, candidates for the 2025 Tansley Medal are finalizing their personal statements, and we look forward to reading with interest all their excellent contributions to plant science. We encourage applications from across the breadth of the plant science community and invite you to bring the Tansley Medal competition to the awareness of your colleagues world-wide. Further information is available on the Tansley Medal pages of the New Phytologist Foundation website at: https://www.newphytologist.org/awards/tansleymedal.

We offer our warmest congratulations to Matthew and his fellow finalists, and we wish them continued success in their future careers.

The judging panel for the 2024 Tansley Medal was comprised of the following New Phytologist Editors: Amy T. Austin (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Ian A. Dickie (Canterbury, New Zealand), Liam Dolan (Vienna, Austria), Elena M. Kramer (Cambridge, MA, USA) and Shuhua Yang (Beijing, China).