Andrew Millar (biologist) facts for kids

Andrew John McWalter Millar is a Scottish scientist. He studies how living things keep track of time, which is called chronobiology. He also works in systems biology, looking at how different parts of living systems work together.

Professor Millar teaches at The University of Edinburgh. He is known for his work on plant circadian rhythms. These are like internal clocks that tell plants when to grow or flower. He helped develop ways to see these clocks in action using a special light-up chemical called luciferase. This helped him find plants with different clock patterns.

He also found that a gene called ELF4 helps control when Arabidopsis plants flower. Because of his important discoveries, Professor Millar became a member of the Royal Society in 2012 and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013.

Andrew Millar's Life and Education

Andrew Millar grew up in Luxembourg. He went to Cambridge University in England. There, he studied genetics and botany, which is the study of plants. He earned his first degree in 1988.

After Cambridge, he moved to the United States. He studied at The Rockefeller University and earned his PhD in 1994. His research focused on the genetics of plants. He then did more research at the University of Virginia.

In 1996, he became a professor at the University of Warwick. He started working on synthetic biology, which is about designing new biological systems. He also continued his work on plant chronobiology. In 2005, he moved to The University of Edinburgh. He helped start SynthSys in 2007. This is a special center for synthetic and systems biology research.

Discoveries in Plant Clocks

How Light Helps Study Plant Clocks

Professor Millar is famous for using luciferase to study plant circadian rhythms. Luciferase is the chemical that makes fireflies glow. He used it to see how plant genes turn on and off over time.

In 1992, he connected the luciferase gene to a plant gene called cab2. This made the cab2 gene light up when it was active. He used a special camera to watch this light. This allowed him to see the plant's internal clock working in real-time. He thought this method could help find plants with unusual clock patterns.

In 1995, his team used this method to find Arabidopsis plants with different clock rhythms. They found that a gene called toc1 made the plant's clock run faster. These important findings were published in Science magazine. His work with luciferase has greatly helped us understand plant clocks.

The Role of ELF3 and ELF4 Genes

Professor Millar also worked with Steve Kay's group to find out what the ELF3 and ELF4 genes do in plants. They found that if a plant had a problem with its elf3 gene, its clock didn't work right in constant light. This showed that elf3 is important for the clock to respond to light.

They also showed that ELF3 and ELF4 are needed for other important clock genes, like Circadian Clock Associated 1 (CCA1) and Late Elongated Hypocotyl (LHY), to work properly. These discoveries helped scientists understand how the plant's internal clock works. Scientists are still studying how ELF3 and ELF4 interact with other parts of the clock.

How Plant Clocks Help Plants Survive

In 2005, Professor Millar and his team found out how plant clocks help plants grow better. They compared how well Arabidopsis plants grew in different light-dark cycles. Some plants had a natural 24-hour clock, while others had clocks that were shorter (20 hours) or longer (28 hours).

They found that plants grew best when their internal clock matched the length of the day and night cycle. For example, plants with a 20-hour clock grew best in a 20-hour light-dark cycle. This showed that having a clock that matches the environment helps plants make more food and grow stronger. This is a big advantage for their survival in nature.

Current Research

As of 2025, Professor Millar and his team are still working on understanding plant clocks. In 2017, they created detailed computer models. These models help predict how changes in a plant's clock affect its growth and other features. They found that a plant's growth rate can change if its clock is altered. This is partly because of how the plant uses stored energy at night.

Awards and Positions

• BBSRC Research Development Fellow (2002–2007)
• Manager of the Interdisciplinary Program for Cellular Regulation (2003–2004)
• Professor of Systems Biology, University of Edinburgh (2005–present)
• Founding Director of the Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh (2007–2011)
• Elected EMBO member (2011)
• Fellow of the Royal Society (2012) (He resigned from the society in February 2025.)
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2013)

Awards

• Society for Experimental Biology President's Medal (1999)
• British Association for the Advancement of Science Charles Darwin Award Lecture (2000)
• Saltire Award for Scottish Research (2009)
• Aschoff's Rule (2015)

See also

• Circadian rhythm
• ELF4
• Steve A. Kay
• Gene D. Block