Thea Kongsted completed her PhD in Plant Sciences in 2024, studying at Jesus College, Cambridge and working with Beverley Glover in the Evolution and Development group at the Department of Plant Sciences.
Here she talks about how she benefitted from the Tom ap Rees fund whilst studying in Cambridge, and what she has gone on to do since.
To find out more about how you can support students studying Plant Sciences at Cambridge, including contributing towards Tom ap Rees funding, please visit our Support Plant Sciences pages.
Tell us about your PhD
My PhD thesis ‘Early land plant origins of the MYB-bHLH-WDR complex’ compared the genes regulating red colouration in distantly related plant groups. This involved reconstructing the relationships between genes across hundreds of millions of years of evolution and generating mutant plants to characterise their functions. We focused on the then newly characterised red pigments of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha.
Liverworts are relatives of mosses, and together they split from angiosperms – the plants that make flowers – some half a billion years ago. We discovered that the same genetic mechanism controls the accumulation of red pigments in liverworts and flowering plants, even though the pigments themselves are chemically distinct. We also found that co-option of these pigment-regulators into new pathways has occurred in a similar manner independently in each of the lineages.
How did the Tom ap Rees Fund help you?
My time in Cambridge was marked by the covid pandemic, which began when I was half a year into my PhD programme. This slowed progress on experiments in the laboratory and delayed the opportunities to discuss my research with international colleagues. By the time my 3.5-year NERC studentship was coming to an end, I successfully applied for a few smaller grants, among them the Tom ap Rees fund. The funding allowed me to stay and work in the Department for 6 months longer to finish up my projects and prepare them for publication.
What difference did this funding make?
During this time, while finishing up data collection and analysis, I published part of my first chapter as a short paper and wrote up the rest of my thesis. After I left Cambridge, we submitted the main findings of my PhD research to a journal, and after some time revising the manuscript, it has now been accepted for publication.
What have you gone on to do since graduating?
After submitting my thesis, I moved to Vienna to join the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology as a postdoctoral fellow. Here, I am still working on Marchantia polymorpha, having been impressed by the power of these small plants for experimental biology.
They develop from a single tiny spore which is released into the environment by the parent. We are leveraging this by developing methods for imaging isolated spores growing inside a microscope. This allows us to resolve the entire 3D-structure of the spore as it begins to divide. We are using this as a simple system to address fundamental questions about how a single ‘mother’ cell can give rise to multiple distinct ‘daughter’ cell types.
Why should someone give to the Tom ap Rees Fund?
Science involves methods development and experimentation, so it is necessarily a slow and unpredictable process. Despite this, funding timelines are usually tight.
Supplementary grants like the Tom ap Rees fund can make a big difference by allowing scientists to finish up projects which show promising results. This enables discoveries to be published and contribute to the wider scientific community and society.
Among such grants, the Tom ap Rees fund is especially visible and accessible to students in the Department of Plant Sciences, so that the process of applying is quick and they can focus their time on getting to work creating new knowledge.
About the Tom ap Rees fund
The Tom ap Rees fund supports fourth-year PhD students in need of financial assistance to complete their studies. It was set up in 1996 in honour of Professor of Botany, Tom ap Rees, who was tragically killed on his bike on his way home from work. Our aim is to increase the fund to ensure we can support all postgraduate students in need.
Image: Thea Kongsted walking in the hills on the outskirts of Vienna, where she is now working at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology as a postdoctoral fellow. Photo provided by Thea Kongsted.