The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) located at the John Innes Centre

John Innes Centre

The John Innes Centre located in Norwich, Norfolk, England is an independent centre for research and training in plant and microbial science...

 (JIC) in Norwich

Norwich

Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...

, Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 is a world leading institute working on plant-microbe interactions.. TSL has research groups working on aspects of plant disease, plant disease resistance

Plant disease resistance

Plant disease resistance is crucial to the reliable production of food, and it provides significant reductions in agricultural use of fuel, land, water and other inputs. There are numerous examples of devastating plant disease impacts , as well as recurrent severe plant disease issues...

 and microbial symbiosis in plants.

History

An agreement was signed in 1987, setting up the Laboratory as a joint venture between the Gatsby Charitable Foundation

Gatsby Charitable Foundation

The Gatsby Charitable Foundation is an endowed grant-making trust, based in London. The organisation is one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, set up to provide funding for charitable causes. Although the organisation is permitted in its Trust Deed to make general grants within this broad...

 (Gatsby), the John Innes Foundation (JIF), the University of East Anglia

University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...

 (UEA) and the Agricultural and Food Research Council (now BBSRC). The current laboratory building was constructed at the John Innes Centre and occupied in 1989. Although it is a separate legal entity, the Laboratory participates fully in the life of the John Innes Centre and the University of East Anglia.

From its inception, the SL has been generously supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Gatsby, one of The Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, currently focuses its grantmaking on a limited number of fields. In addition to plant science, these include technical education, economic and social research, disadvantaged children, mental health, cognitive neuroscience, work in sub-Saharan Africa and a few institutions in the Arts. In the mid 1980s the Gatsby trustees decided to establish the Sainsbury Laboratory to investigate plant interactions with microbes and viruses, using state-of-the-art genetics and molecular biology techniques. This topic was chosen because the UK already had considerable expertise in this area, and because it presented a large number of questions with fundamental significance in biology, with good prospects that any discoveries might be usefully applied.