Ann Patricia Wood is a retired British biochemist and bacteriologist who specialized in the ecology, taxonomy and physiology of sulfur-oxidizing chemolithoautotrophic bacteria and how methylotrophic bacteria play a role in the degradation of odour causing compounds in the human mouth, vagina and skin.
Wood earned her Ph.D. in 1977 from Queen Elizabeth College working on the growth of Paracoccus versutus strain A2 (then "Thiobacillus sp.
[4] She has also investigated the presence and role of methylotrophic bacteria in the natural world, including as symbionts of Thyasira flexuosa Montagu and living in association with Tagetes erecta L.[8][9] These natural settings have included such places as the River Thames,[10] thermal sulfur springs,[11][12] and in Antarctica.
[13] Beyond studying the presence and effect of methylotrophs and sulfur oxidizing bacteria, she looked at their metabolism, taxonomy and diversity/[4] Wood's research on microbial use of one-carbon organic compounds that contain sulfur was reviewedin a 2018 publication,[14] which named two metabolic pathways after Wood: the Padden-Wood pathway based on work with Xanthobacter tagetidis, an organism able to grow on substituted thiophenes,[8] and the Borodonia-Wood pathway based on microbial growth on dimethylsulfone and dimethylsulfide in Hyphomicrobium sulfonivorans.
In 2017, the bacterial genus Annwoodia was named in honor of the contributions made by Wood,[1] including her description of the type species Annwoodia aquaesulis, originally described as a member of the genus Thiobacillus,[11] and her "significant contributions to the taxonomy of the ‘sulfur bacteria’ and methylotrophic "Proteobacteria" [now Pseudomonadota], their physiology and ecology".