Jeffrey Lynn Bennetzen is an American geneticist on the faculty of the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

(UGA). Bennetzen is known for his work describing codon usage bias in yeast, being the first to clone and sequence an active transposon in maize,Hitt, E. (2004). Biography of Jeffrey L. Bennetzen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(34), 12402-12403. doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0405476101 and developing and proposing along with

Michael Freeling Michael Freeling is an American geneticist and plant biologist. He is currently a professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California. He is known for early work on maize anaerobic metabolism, developmental ...

the model of the grasses as a single genetic system. He is one of two authors, with

Sarah Hake Sarah Hake is an American plant developmental biologist who directs the USDA's Plant Gene Expression Center in Albany, CA. In 2009 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and elected member of the Nati ...

of the book "Handbook of Maize." Bennetzen was elected to 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 ...

in 2004.

Education

After his 1970 graduation from Upland High School in Upland, California, he received his bachelor's degree in biology from the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

in 1974 and his doctoral degree in biochemistry from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

in 1980. He served as a postdoctoral fellow from 1980 through 1981 on a joint project between

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

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 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 ...

. From 1981 to 1983 he was a research scientist at the International Plant Research Institute.

Career

In 1983, Bennetzen became an Assistant Professor at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

, becoming a full Professor in 1991 and H. Edwin Umbarger Distinguished Professor of Genetics in 1999. After two decades at Purdue, he joined the faculty at UGA in 2003 as a Professor of Genetics,

Georgia Research Alliance The Georgia Research Alliance is an Atlanta, Georgia-based nonprofit organization that coordinates research efforts between Georgia's public and private sectors. While GRA receives a state appropriation for investment in university-based research op ...

Eminent Scholar, and Giles Chair in Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics. He was interim Head of the Department of Genetics at UGA from 2009–2011. He is also an adjunct member of UGA's interdisciplinary Institute of Bioinformatics and Department of Plant Biology. He founded the Maize Genetics Executive Committee (2000) and the

McClintock Prize The McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies is a prize awarded in genetics and genomics. The Prize is awarded by the Maize Genetics Executive Committee, and is presented to the Prize winner each spring at the Annual Maize Genetics ...

(2014). From 2012–2016, he was a 1000 Talents Professor in the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the

Kunming Institute of Botany Kunming Institute of Botany, or KIB (), founded in 1938, is a research institution in the field of Botany, which is located in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, China. The Institute is one of the major herbariums in China and maintains a ...

. In 2016, he established labs at

Anhui Agricultural University Anhui Agricultural University (AAU) () is in Hefei, the capital city of Anhui, China. AAU is a key university, with a long history specializing in agriculture and forestry. It is jointly funded by Anhui Provincial Government and the Ministry of ...

and the Yunnan Academy of Forestry to study the molecular genetics of tea (''Camellia sinensis'') and two Chinese native oil trees, ''Camellia oleifera'' and ''Malania oleifera''.

Research Focuses

Bennetzen's research interests include plant genome structure/evolution and gene function relationships, transposable element (TE) biology, genetic diversity in under-utilized crops of the developing world, rapid evolution of complex disease resistance loci in plants, fine structure recombinational analysis, the coevolution of plant/microbe and plant/parasite interactions, and the genetic basis of quality traits in tea and other important crops. His lab was the first to clone an active TE from plants (1982); to show that classic disease resistance genes in plants are both recombinationally unstable and cell autonomous (1988); to use DNA probes from one grass genome to map another (maize, sorghum), demonstrating genetic collinearity (1990); to show that DNA TEs preferentially insert into hypomethylated DNAs in or near genes (1995); to demonstrate that the majority of plant genomes is composed of LTR retrotransposons (1996); to show the microcolinearity of plant genomes (1997), and the nature/rate/origin of exceptions to microcolinearity (1999); to explain the timing and mode of both plant genome expansion (1998) and contraction (2002); to show that plant centromeres are hot spots for recombination but not crossing over (2006); to show apparent site-directed recombination in plants (at a disease resistance gene) (2008); to use centromere gain/loss to determine the origin of plant chromosomes (in maize) (2012); to demonstrate that errors in mismatch base repair may be the most common origin of DNA double strand breaks in plants (2014); and to demonstrate domestication-associated changes in root and rhizosphere microbiomes (2018).

Education and honors

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

, Biology, Highest Honors,

, 1974 *

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

., Biochemistry,

, 1980 * Presidential Young Investigator Award,

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

, 1986 * McKnight Foundation Award in Plant Biology, 1986 * Fulbright Awards, 1990 & 2008 * Sigma Xi Faculty Research Award, Purdue University, 1995 * Umbarger Endowed Professorship in Genetics, 1999 * Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Centenary Professorship, University of Hyderabad, 2002 * Member,

, 2004 *

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, 2008 * 1000 Overseas Talents Award, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2012 * Lamar Dodd Creative Research Medal, University of Georgia, 2014 * Yunnan Province Overseas Talent Award, 2015 * Dist. Visiting Researcher Award, CSIRO, Australia, 2017

References

UGA Genetics Department Biography''UGA professor Jeffrey Bennetzen named to National Academy of Sciences'', Scienceblog.com, April 2004Bennetzen Research Group website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bennetzen, Jeffrey Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American geneticists University of Georgia faculty University of Washington alumni Year of birth missing (living people) University of California, San Diego alumni Washington University in St. Louis fellows Purdue University faculty Upland High School alumni