Daphne Osborne facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Daphne Osborne
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Daphne J. Osborne
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| Born | 7 March 1930 India
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| Died | 16 June 2006 (aged 76) |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | King's College, University of London, UK; Wye College, University of London, UK |
| Known for | plant hormones, especially ethylene |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | plant physiology |
| Institutions | Agricultural Research Council, UK; California Institute of Technology, USA; The Open University, UK; Somerville College, Oxford |
| Thesis | Studies on Plant Growth Regulators (1950) |
| Doctoral advisor | R Louis Wain |
| Influences | Fritz Went |
Daphne J. Osborne (born March 7, 1930 – died June 16, 2006) was a famous British botanist. She spent over 50 years studying how plants grow and change. Her work was so important that she published more than 200 scientific papers. Twenty of these were in Nature, a very respected science magazine. People called her scientific achievements "legendary."
Daphne Osborne mostly studied plant hormones, which are like chemical messengers in plants. She also looked at seeds and how plants fix their DNA. She is best known for her work on a gas called ethylene. She proved that ethylene is a natural plant hormone. It helps control how plants age and how leaves and fruits fall off. She also came up with the idea of "target cells." This helps explain how a few plant hormones can have many different effects.
Contents
Becoming a Scientist
Daphne Osborne was born in India. Her father worked there for the government. She went to The Perse School in Cambridge, England. She earned her first degree in chemistry and a master's degree in botany from King's College London. She then got her PhD from the University of London. Her research was about chemicals that control plant growth.
After her studies, she moved to the California Institute of Technology in the USA. She was a Fulbright Scholar there. She worked with another famous botanist, Fritz Went.
Her Career Journey
Daphne Osborne spent most of her career at the Agricultural and Food Research Council (ARC) in the UK. In 1952, she joined a research group at Oxford University. She worked there until 1970.
Then, she became the deputy director at a new research center in Cambridge. While in Cambridge, she made history. She became the first female fellow at Churchill College. She also guided the college's first female PhD student.
Later, she worked at the AFRC Weed Research Organization. She became a very senior scientist there. In 1985, she retired from her government job. But she didn't stop working! She became a visiting professor at Oxford University. She also became an honorary research fellow at the Open University and Somerville College, Oxford.
She continued her research at the Open University until she passed away in 2006. During this time, she led big international research projects. She also got funding from major organizations like Unilever and the Wellcome Trust.
Daphne Osborne traveled a lot for her work. She visited many countries, including the USA, Argentina, Australia, India, and China. She worked with scientists from all over the world. In 1988, she even organized a big international meeting in Italy.
Amazing Discoveries
Daphne Osborne was always fascinated by how hormones control plant growth and development. Her most famous discovery was proving that ethylene gas is a natural plant hormone. Before her work, many thought it was just a waste product or pollution. She showed that ethylene is key to how plants age and how parts like leaves fall off.
She also studied how ethylene works with another plant hormone called auxin. These hormones work together to control many things in plants. Her research led her to create the "target cell" idea. This idea explains how a small number of plant hormones can cause many different effects in a plant. She wrote a book about this idea in 2005.
Another big part of her research was about seeds. She was an expert on how seeds age and how plants repair their DNA. She studied how DNA damage affects how well seeds can grow. In the 1970s, she tried to get DNA from very old seeds found in Egyptian tombs. She found that only tiny pieces of DNA remained.
One of her last projects looked at how radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster affected DNA repair in seeds and pollen.
Daphne Osborne studied many different types of plants. These ranged from tiny water plants to important plants like the African oil palm. She also researched how plant hormones affect insects. She was even involved in space biology. She designed a project for Spacelab to study how gravity affects grass growth.
Awards and Recognition
Daphne Osborne received many awards and honors for her important work:
- She was made an honorary professor at Kiev University in Ukraine. This was for her research on the Chernobyl disaster.
- She received honorary degrees from the Open University in the UK and the University of Natal in South Africa.
- In 1983, she won the Sircar Memorial Gold Medal for Research in Physiology.
- She was elected a corresponding member of the Botanical Society of America in 1996.
- In 2008, a special issue of the journal Annals of Botany was published to honor her.
Key Publications
Books
- Osborne DJ, McManus MT. Hormones, Signals and Target Cells in Plant Development (Cambridge University Press; 2005) (ISBN: 0-521-33076-9)
Research Papers
- Boubriak II, et al. (2008) Adaptation and impairment of DNA repair function in pollen of Betula verrucosa and seeds of Oenothera biennis from differently radionuclide-contaminated sites of Chernobyl. Annals of Botany 101: 267–276
- Cheah KSE, Osborne DJ. (1978) DNA lesions occur with loss of viability in embryos of aging rye seed. Nature 272: 593–599
- Osborne DJ, Wright M. (1978) Gravity induced cell elongation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 199: 551–564
- Knee M, Sargent JA, Osborne DJ. (1977) Cell wall metabolism in developing strawberry fruits. Journal of Experimental Botany 28: 377–396
- Osborne DJ, Jackson MB, Milborrow BV. (1972) Physiological properties of an abscission accelerator from senescent leaves. Nature New Biology 240: 98–101
- Jackson MB, Osborne DJ. (1970) Ethylene, the natural regulator of leaf abscission. Nature 225: 1019–1022
- Ridge I, Osborne DJ. (1970) Hydroxyproline and peroxidases in cell walls of Pisum sativum: regulation by ethylene. Journal of Experimental Botany 21: 843–856
- Horton RF, Osborne DJ. (1967) Senescence, abscission and cellulase activity in Phaseolus vulgaris. Nature 214: 1086–1088
- Fletcher RA, Osborne DJ. (1965) Regulation of protein and nucleic acid synthesis by gibberellin during leaf senescence. Nature 207: 1176–1177
- Osborne DJ, Hallaway HM. (1964) The auxin, 2-4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid as a regulator of protein synthesis and senescence in detached leaves of Prunus. New Phytologist 63: 334–347
- Osborne DJ. (1962) Effect of kinetin on protein & nucleic acid metabolism in Xanthium leaves during senescence. Plant Physiology 37: 595–602
- Osborne DJ. (1955) Acceleration of abscission by factors in senescent leaves. Nature 176: 1161–1163
