Christopher Roland Somerville is a Canadian-American biologist known as a pioneer of ''

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 ...

'' research. Somerville is currently Professor Emeritus at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and a Program Officer at the

Open Philanthropy Project Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current co-chief executive officers are Holden K ...

Life and career

Somerville majored in Mathematics and completed a PhD in Genetics at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...

, and then did postdoctoral research in the laboratory of William Ogren before serving as a faculty member at U. Alberta and

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

. He directed the Department of Plant Science at the

Carnegie Institution for Science The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. Th ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and then the

Energy Biosciences Institute The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) is an organization dedicated to developing new sources of energy and reducing the impact of energy consumption. It was created in 2007 to apply advanced knowledge of biology to the challenges of responsible ...

at the

. He retired from the UC Berkeley faculty in 2017. Somerville was co-founder and Executive Chairman of Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. and a co-founder of Poetic Genetics,

LS9, Inc LS-9 Inc was a venture-funded company focused on producing diesel fuel from transgenic organisms. It launched in 2005, took in $81 million in investment, and in 2013 was sold to Renewable Energy Group for $40 million in cash and stock, and an addit ...

, and Redleaf Biologics. Somerville has contributed to societal debates on the value of

transgenic crops Genetically modified crops (GM crops) are plants used in agriculture, the DNA of which has been modified using genetic engineering methods. Plant genomes can be engineered by physical methods or by use of ''Agrobacterium'' for the delivery of ...

and biofuels. Together with

Elliot Meyerowitz Elliot Meyerowitz (born May 22, 1951) is an American biologist. Career Meyerowitz did his undergraduate work at Columbia University (A.B. in biology, 1973), where he worked part-time in the laboratory of Cyrus Levinthal on combined microscopic a ...

, Somerville was awarded the

Balzan Prize The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the br ...

in 2006 for his work developing the small mustard plant ''A. thaliana'' as a model. His interest in this plant was partly stimulated by a review article written by

George Rédei George P. Rédei (June 14, 1921 – November 10, 2008) was a Hungarian plant biologist, professor, author and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Biography George Rédei was born June 14, 1921, in Vienna, Austria, to Kalman and Margit ...

. Many trainees from Somerville's lab have started independent labs, including

Mark Estelle Mark Estelle (born July 29, 1981) is a former professional American and Canadian football defensive back. He played for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League from 2006 to 2011. He also played for the Houston Texans of the Nationa ...

, Peter McCourt, George W. Haughn, John W. Schiefelbein, Christoph Benning, Clint Chapple, Wolf-Dieter Reiter, John Browse, Sean Cutler, Dominique Bergmann, Seung Y. Rhee, Staffan Persson, Wolfgang Lukowitz, and C. Stewart Gillmor.

Research highlights

* Pioneered ‘biochemical genetics’ approach to problems in plant metabolism, including

photorespiration Photorespiration (also known as the oxidative photosynthetic carbon cycle or C2 cycle) refers to a process in plant metabolism where the enzyme RuBisCO oxygenates RuBP, wasting some of the energy produced by photosynthesis. The desired reaction i ...

, lipid metabolism, and

cellulose Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of β(1→4) linked D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important structural component of the primary cell wall ...

synthesis. * First map-based cloning of an ''A. thaliana'' gene * Lead development of

The Arabidopsis Information Resource The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) is a community resource and online model organism database of genetic and molecular biology data for the model plant ''Arabidopsis thaliana ''Arabidopsis thaliana'', the thale cress, mouse-ear cress o ...

(TAIR) database and web resource

Selected publications

Review articles

* * * * *

Interviews and historical pieces

* * *

References

External links

Faculty page
with links to CV and list of awards
Google scholar profile

Royal Society page

Open Philanthropy Project page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Somerville, Chris Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Foreign Members of the Royal Society 21st-century American biologists Year of birth missing (living people) Academic staff of the University of Alberta Michigan State University faculty University of Alberta alumni Stanford University faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty