Sarah Hake is an American plant developmental biologist who directs the USDA's Plant Gene Expression Center in

Albany, CA Albany ( ) is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northwestern Alameda County, California. The population was 20,271 at the 2020 census. History In 1908, a group of local women protested the dumping of Berkeley garbage in their ...

. In 2009 she was elected a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

and elected 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 ...

Early life and education

Hake lived in Iowa until she was 10 years old and then moved to California. She attended Grinnell College, graduating in 1975. As an undergraduate she accompanied a professor to the Botanical Garden in St. Louis which convinced her to study plant biology. After working as a waitress for a year after college, she was accepted into the PhD program at

Washington University 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 ...

in St. Louis where she completed her PhD with Virginia Walbot, studying, among other things, the proportion of the DNA in the maize genome which was present as multiple copies. She met Michael Freeling when she was a graduate student and, impressed by research which considered outside the range of traditional genetic research at the time, wrote an NIH proposal to work as a postdoc in his lab 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 ...

cloning the gene ADH1. After cloning the ADH1 gene, Hake and Freeling wrote and received a second grant to clone the Knotted1 gene, which they succeeded in doing in 1989. After completing her postdoc she was hired as a principal investigator at the USDA Plant Gene Expression Center in Albany, CA. She currently serves as the director for the Center and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Research

Hake considers her single most important scientific contribution to be the cloning of Knotted1 the first cloned plant gene with an effect on development. Postdocs working in her lab have gone on to clone other genes controlling maize development including terminal ear1, barren inflorescence2, fasciated ear2, tangled, and indeterminate spikelet1.

Recognition

* In 2007 Hake received Stephen Hales prize from

American Society of Plant Biologists American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

. * In 2009 Hake was elected a fellow of the

. * In 2009 Hake was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Personal life

Hake has two children born while she was a postdoc. Since she was a postdoc at UC-Berkeley, Hake and her family live on the Gospel Flat Farm near

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References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hake, Sarah C Grinnell College alumni Washington University in St. Louis alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Natural Resources faculty American geneticists Living people Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Year of birth missing (living people)