Roger N. Beachy

Roger N. Beachy (1944) is an American biologist and the founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

Birth and education

Roger N. Beachy was born in 1944 in the United States. He completed his BA in biology from Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana. Then, he completed his Ph.D. in plant pathology from Michigan State University.

Academic career

After completing his PhD, he became a member of the Biology Department at Washington University in St. Louis from 1978 to 1991, where he was Professor and Director of the Center for Plant Science and Biotechnology. From 1991 to 1998, he headed the Division of Plant Biology at The Scripps Research Institute, a leading biomedical research center in La Jolla, California. Since January 1999, he is the president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

Research

Roger N. Beachy is an expert in plant virology and biotechnology of plants. He established principles for the genetic engineering of plants, that make them resistant to viral diseases.

His research at Washington University in St. Louis, in collaboration with Monsanto Company, led to the development of the world’s first genetically modified food crop, a variety of tomato that was modified for resistance to virus disease. He demonstrated pathogen-derived resistance in plants and produce the first disease-resistant transgenic plant. He also showed that by transferring and expressing the coat protein gene of a virus in plants (coat protein-mediated resistance - CPMýR), these transgenic plants become resistant to viral infection. His discovery of the CPMR led to the development of virus-resistant varieties of potato, tomato, pepper, cucumber, squash, sugar beets, papaya and plum.

Awards and honors

Roger N. Beachy has received several awards and honors in his life. In 2001, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture along with James E. Womack of Texas A&M University "for the use of recombinant DNA technology, to revolutionize plant and animal sciences, paving the way for applications to neighboring fields". [ [http://www.wolffund.org.il/cat.asp?id=14&cat_title=AGRICULTURE The Wolf Prize in Agriculture] ] He is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Notes

References

* The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center [http://www.danforthcenter.org/newsmedia/beachy.htm]
* The Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 2001 [http://www.wolffund.org.il/full.asp?id=41]

External links

* [http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/CC/beachy.html Interview with Roger Beachy]