Brian John Staskawicz ForMemRS is professor of plant and microbial miology at the University of California, Berkeley and scientific director of agricultural genomics at the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI).

Education

Staskawicz was educated at Bates College (BA, 1974), Yale University (MS, 1976) and the University of California, Berkeley where he completed a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in plant pathology in 1980.

Research and career

Staskawicz has made many seminal contributions to the understanding of infection strategies of plant pathogens and immune response of plants. These include the cloning of the first pathogen effector gene and the cloning and characterisation of one of the first plant NOD-like receptors. Staskawicz and his colleagues also played a major role in establishing ''

Arabidopsis thaliana ''Arabidopsis thaliana'', the thale cress, mouse-ear cress or arabidopsis, is a small flowering plant native to Eurasia and Africa. ''A. thaliana'' is considered a weed; it is found along the shoulders of roads and in disturbed land. A winter a ...

'' as a

model organism A model organism (often shortened to model) is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workin ...

to study the molecular basis of microbial recognition by plants and genetically dissect defense signaling pathways. More recently, he is leading an effort at the IGI in the genome editing of agriculture crops for

biotic Biotics describe living or once living components of a community; for example organisms, such as animals and plants. Biotic may refer to: *Life, the condition of living organisms *Biology, the study of life * Biotic material, which is derived from ...

and abiotic stress resistance and improved plant performance. Work in his laboratory has identified and characterised bacterial effector proteins from both '' Pseudomonas syringae'' and '' Xanthomonas'' spp.

Awards and honours

Staskawicz was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2019. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: He is a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

of the US and has been elected a Fellow of both the American Phytopathological Society and the American Academy of Microbiology.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Staskawicz, Brian Living people Foreign Members of the Royal Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Year of birth missing (living people)