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Jeff Bennetzen
The Bennetzen laboratory has spent nearly 25 years investigating the factors responsible for plant genome evolution. Early studies included the molecular cloning and characterization of transposable elements (e.g., the Mutator system of maize) and investigations of plant disease resistance gene evolution (e.g., the hyper-unstable Rp1 resistance gene cluster of maize). In the late 1980s, the Bennetzen lab began investigating genomic colinearity in the grasses, leading to the conceptualization of the single grass genome as a research model, and to discovery of the general structure and variation of complex plant genomes like maize. Most recently, this group has been characterizing the molecular mechanisms responsible for plant genome instability, and lineage-specific differences in the aggressiveness of these processes.
This page last modified on February 19, 2006 |
Jeff Bennetzen received his B.A. in Biology from the University of California at San Diego in 1974 and a Ph.D in Biochemistry from the University of Washington (Seattle) in 1980. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked on a shared project between the laboratories of Dr. Michael Freeling (U.C. Berkeley) and Dr. Virginia Walbot (Stanford Univ.). In 1981, he joined the International Plant Research Institute in San Carlos, CA, before moving to Purdue University as an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences in 1983. Since 2003, he has been the Giles Professor of Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia.