Caroline Dean
| Dame Caroline Dean | |
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| Born | 2 April 1957 |
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| Alma mater | University of York (BSc, DPhil) |
| Thesis | Investigations of genome expression in young wheat leaves (1983) |
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| Spouse | Jonathan D. G. Jones (m. 1991) |
| Children | one son, one daughter |
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Dame Caroline Dean, DBE, FRS (born 2 April 1957) is a British plant scientist working at the John Innes Centre on the molecular control of timing of flowering in plants.
Dean was educated at the University of York, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology in 1978 and a DPhil in 1982.
Dean's research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and focuses on:
"the timing of the transition to reproductive development in plants. The acceleration of flowering by prolonged cold is a classic epigenetic process called vernalization. The study of this and parallel genetic pathways has led us into the dissection of conserved chromatin silencing mechanisms involving non-coding RNAs.
Our recent work has focused on a mechanistic understanding of vernalization and on the pathways that determine a requirement for vernalization. These pathways converge on a gene that encodes a floral repressor called FLC. We analyse how these pathways intersect during development, in different environmental conditions, and through evolution. This takes us into the analysis of what regulates reproductive strategy in plants. We use Arabidopsis as a reference to establish the regulatory hierarchy and then translate our findings into other species."
In 2004 Dean was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2008 the United States National Academy of Sciences elected her a foreign fellow. Her nomination for the Royal Society reads:
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Wikipedia