Dr Brett Williams

Deputy Program Leader (Genetics and Molecular Biology) and Senior Lecturer - Plant Science, Faculty of Science

Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology)

Brett Williams is a research group leader and senior lecturer in the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences and course coordinator of the Bachelor of Science Advanced in the Faculty of Science at the Queensland University of Technology. He earned his BS and PhD at QUT, focusing on developing a novel virus-inducible protein expression system in plants. After completing his PhD, Brett travelled to Texas A & M University in the USA, where he studied plant Programmed Cell Death (PCD) pathways in response to biotic and abiotic stimuli. In 2010, Brett returned to QUT to study stress tolerance responses in the Australian resurrection plant, Tripogon loliiformis. He subsequently received QUT Vice Chancellor’s and Advance QLD Research Fellowships to explore cell death pathways in Tripogon loliiformis and conduct Australia’s first GM chickpea trial, respectively. Currently, Brett and his lab are investigating the role of energy metabolism in regulating cell death and senescence pathways in resilient species with the aim to translate this fundamental knowledge to improve important crop species such as Chickpea.

Brett’s research has led to several fundamental discoveries, including;

– The identification of Arabidopsis Bcl-2 athanogene (BAG) family members in various sub-cellular organelles.

– The observation that the Arabidopsis BAG family plays a central role in regulating programmed cell death pathways.

– The tight regulation of autophagy pathways by naturally resilient plant species to tolerate stress

– The suppression of stress-related senescence pathways in naturally resilient species to tolerate extreme climates

– The observation that transgenic chickpea lines engineered to constitutively express AtBAG4 are more drought tolerant and produce higher yields with higher seed protein content under drought stress in the field.

– Suppression of host defence pathways by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum secreted oxalic acid

– Temporal induction of plant PCD pathways as a key pathogenicity factor of the potent necrotrophic fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum

Projects (Chief investigator)

• Advance Queensland Fellowship - Pulse legumes
• Bolstering QUT’s capacity in plant proteomics
• Plant adaptation and resilient crop production

Additional information