Rosemary Carpenter

Starting in the 1960, Carpenter worked with Brian Harrison at the John Innes Centre on unstable mutants of the snapdragon Antirrhinum.^[2] After meeting Carpenter during an interview at the John Innes Centre in 1983, Enrico Coen joined the center and they began a long collaboration with him using snapdragons as a model system to understand jumping genes and evolution.^[3][2] They applied a combination of molecular, genetic and morphological approaches to snapdragons with the goal of elucidating patterns in flower development^[4] using the hundreds of Antirrhihum mutants established by Carpenter.^[5] Carpenter retired in 2003.^[6]

Carpenter is a plant geneticist known for her research on the population genetics of the snapdragon, Antirrhihum.^[7][2] Working with Brian Harrison in the 1970s, she defined genetic instabilities in Antirrhinum and the role of temperature in controlling the rate of instability of specific genes^[8][9] and transposable elements that occur in both maize and snapdragons.^[10] This was the first time a link between genetic instability and Antirrhihum was formalized, a milestone in research using snapdragons.^[11] The instability of genes in snapdragons begin Carpenter's collaboration with Enrico Coen, where they first worked on transposons and the effect of temperature on the excision of specific genes^[12] and how the transposable elements cause variability in gene expression.^[13][14] Carpenter, Coen, and their students isolated the genes controlling floral development.^[15][16][17] These genetic investigations allowed them to define the patterns of color,^[18][19] shape,^[20][21][22] and floral asymmetry^[23][24] in snapdragons and other plants. Carpenter's research on snapdragons includes investigations of how snapdragons select their colors using small RNA,^[25] which alter the selection of colors in the snapdragons.^[26]