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Jessica Knox, a fourth-year PhD student in molecular genetics, has been awarded a Jennifer Dorrington graduate Research Award for 2021.

“I am very grateful for this award,” says Knox. “It’s very motivating and a big confidence boost, because it means I’m on the right track.”

Knox is working to identify new chemical compounds that can kill worm parasites that destroy crops and threaten global food supply. She is supervised by Peter Roy, a professor of molecular genetics in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, whose team previously discovered several chemicals effective against the nematode worm C. elegans which they use as a model for these crop parasites.

Supported by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund travel award, Knox tested these compounds at the U.S. Department of Agriculture research centre in Corvallis, Oregon. She found that some of the compounds were more effective than existing pesticides in protecting the roots of tomato plants from the widespread and highly destructive parasite, Meloidogyne incognita. The chemicals are only toxic to worms and have no effect on other animals, such as fish, or on cultured human cells suggesting that they are harmless to humans.

Knox’s goal for the remainder of her PhD is to establish how the chemicals work at the molecular level so that they can be more easily turned into commercial products.