Position: Senior Scientist, Plant & Food Research.
Field: Proteomics.
William's research interests are in proteomics. This is an area of research that involves separating proteins and determining their levels in different tissues.
William was part of New Zealand's nutrigenomics research team. William and his colleagues use proteomics information to study the ways that different foods and food components affect cell functioning.
This is especially important in nutrigenomics, which also involves comparing different genotypes with different susceptibility to diseases.
There are always new frontiers in science - it never stops being new
William is the leader of Plant & Food Research's contribution to the nutrigenomics initiative, and he has to ensure that he has a broad understanding of all aspects of nutrigenomics research, especially those parts in which Plant & Food Research is making a significant contribution. This project ran for 10 years from 2004.
Read more about Nutrigenomics.
Career Pathway
William spent many years a plant biochemist. He was then asked to lead the HortResearch, now Plant & Food Research, efforts in the collaborative nutrigenomics programme. He continues to work for Plant & Food Research in the areas of plant metabolism, nutrigenomics, plant genomics and the identification of genes that encode enzymes.
This article is based on information current in 2007 and 2018.
Useful link
Listen to this Plant & Food podcast in which Dr William 'Kiwifruit' Laing discuss the many powers of enzymes and describe some of the enzyme actions that we may come across in our kitchen
