Mark L. Wheelis is an American

microbiologist A microbiologist (from Ancient Greek, Greek ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of Microorganism, microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, f ...

. Wheelis is currently a professor in the College of Biological Sciences,

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

Carl Woese Carl Richard Woese (; July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012) was an American microbiologist and biophysicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain of life) in 1977 through a pioneering phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, ...

and

Otto Kandler Otto Kandler (23 October 1920 in Deggendorf – 29 August 2017 in Munich, Bavaria) was a German botanist and microbiologist. Until his retirement in 1986 he was professor of botany at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. His most importa ...

with Wheelis wrote the important

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed ...

'' Towards a natural system of organisms: proposal for the domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eucarya'' that proposed a change from the

Two-empire system The two-empire system (two-superkingdom system) was the top-level biological classification system in general use before the establishment of the three-domain system. It classified cellular life into Prokaryota and Eukaryota as either "empires" or ...

Prokaryotes A prokaryote () is a single-celled organism that lacks a nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles. The word ''prokaryote'' comes from the Greek πρό (, 'before') and κάρυον (, 'nut' or 'kernel').Campbell, N. "Biology:Concepts & Connec ...

and

Eukaryotes Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the three domains of life. Bacte ...

to the

Three-domain system The three-domain system is a biological classification introduced by Carl Woese, Otto Kandler, and Mark Wheelis in 1990 that divides cellular life forms into three domains, namely Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota or Eukarya. The key difference fr ...

of the domains Eukaryota,

Bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...

and

Archaea Archaea ( ; singular archaeon ) is a domain of single-celled organisms. These microorganisms lack cell nuclei and are therefore prokaryotes. Archaea were initially classified as bacteria, receiving the name archaebacteria (in the Archaebac ...

. Wheelis's research interests include the history of

biological warfare Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Bio ...

. He co-authored (with

Larry Gonick Larry Gonick (born 1946) is a cartoonist best known for ''The Cartoon History of the Universe'', a history of the world in comic book form, which he published in installments from 1977 to 2009. He has also written ''The Cartoon History of the U ...

) ''The Cartoon Guide to Genetics'' (1983). Wheelis provided the scientific knowledge and text, while Gonick contributed the illustrations and humor.Larry Gonick & Mark Wheelis, ''The Cartoon Guide to Genetics'', Longman Higher Education, 1983, 216 pp. .

Works

*Larry Gonick & Mark Wheelis, ''The Cartoon Guide to Genetics'', Longman Higher Education, 1983, 216 pp. *"Biological Warfare before 1914", In: Geissler E, Moon JEvC, editors. ''Biological and toxin weapons: research, development and use from the Middle Ages to 1945''. London: Oxford University Press; 1999. pp 8–34.

References

External links

* Living people American microbiologists Year of birth missing (living people) {{microbiology-stub