Robert A. Martienssen

Rob Martienssen
Born Robert Anthony Martienssen
Fields
Institutions Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Alma mater University of Cambridge (PhD)
Thesis The molecular genetics of alpha-amylase gene families in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). (1986)
Doctoral advisor David Baulcombe
Known for
Influences Barbara McClintock[2]
Notable awards
Website
http://www.cshl.edu/Faculty/Rob-Martienssen.html

Robert Anthony Martienssen is a plant biologist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute–Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator[3] and Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the United States.[4][5][6][7]

Education

Martienssen received his PhD in 1986 from the University of Cambridge on the molecular genetics of alpha-amylase gene families in common wheat[8] supervised by David Baulcombe.

Research and career

Martienssen has made major discoveries relating to the way plants control the expression of their genes. Working with maize,[9] yeast[5] and the weed Arabidopsis, he focuses on the chemical modifications to DNA that determine which genes are active — a process known as epigenetics.[2][1]

Martienssen’s work explains the effect on plants of ‘jumping genes’, or DNA transposable elements, reported in 1951 by Barbara McClintock, whom he worked alongside early in his career. He discovered that small pieces of RNA, in association with proteins of the Argonaute family, silence transposons in seeds so that gene expression remains stable from one generation to the next.[2]

His work was cited by the journal Science as part of its Breakthrough of the Year: 2002 feature[10] on small RNAs. He has extended his epigenetic studies from seeds to pollen, and his discoveries have implications for plant breeding — including hybrid cloning — and the development of biofuels.[2]

Honors and awards

Martienssen has received numerous awards and honors during his career including:

References

  1. 1 2 Slotkin, R. Keith; Martienssen, Robert (2007). "Transposable elements and the epigenetic regulation of the genome". Nature Reviews Genetics. 8 (4): 272–285. doi:10.1038/nrg2072. PMID 17363976.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Anon (2006). "Professor Robert Martienssen FRS". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived September 25, 2015)
  3. ↑ "Robert A. Martienssen, PhD | HHMI.org". Retrieved 2015-09-27.
  4. ↑ "CSHLRob Martienssen". www.cshl.edu. Retrieved 2015-09-27.
  5. 1 2 Pichugina, T.; Sugawara, T.; Kaykov, A.; Schierding, W.; Masuda, K.; Uewaki, J.; Grand, R. S.; Allison, J. R.; Martienssen, R. A.; Nurse, P.; Ueno, M.; O’Sullivan, J. M. (2016). "A diffusion model for the coordination of DNA replication in Schizosaccharomyces pombe". Scientific Reports. 6: 18757. doi:10.1038/srep18757.
  6. ↑ Quadrana, Leandro; Bortolini Silveira, Amanda; Mayhew, George F; LeBlanc, Chantal; Martienssen, Robert A; Jeddeloh, Jeffrey A; Colot, Vincent (2016). "The Arabidopsis thaliana mobilome and its impact at the species level". eLife. 5. doi:10.7554/eLife.15716.
  7. ↑ Robert A. Martienssen's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database, a service provided by Elsevier. (subscription required)
  8. ↑ Martienssen, Robert Anthony (1986). The molecular genetics of alpha-amylase gene families in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC 59751016.
  9. ↑ Schnable, P. S.; Ware, D.; Fulton, R. S.; Stein, J. C.; Wei, F.; Pasternak, S.; Liang, C.; Zhang, J.; Fulton, L.; Graves, T. A.; Minx, P.; Reily, A. D.; Courtney, L.; Kruchowski, S. S.; Tomlinson, C.; Strong, C.; Delehaunty, K.; Fronick, C.; Courtney, B.; Rock, S. M.; Belter, E.; Du, F.; Kim, K.; Abbott, R. M.; Cotton, M.; Levy, A.; Marchetto, P.; Ochoa, K.; Jackson, S. M.; Gillam, B.; Chen, W.; Yan, L.; Higginbotham, J.; Cardenas, M.; Waligorski, J.; Applebaum, E.; Phelps, L.; Falcone, J.; Kanchi, K.; Thane, T.; Scimone, A.; Thane, N.; Henke, J.; Wang, T.; Ruppert, J.; Shah, N.; Rotter, K.; Hodges, J.; Ingenthron, E.; Cordes, M.; Kohlberg, S.; Sgro, J.; Delgado, B.; Mead, K.; Chinwalla, A.; Leonard, S.; Crouse, K.; Collura, K.; Kudrna, D.; Currie, J.; He, R.; Angelova, A.; Rajasekar, S.; Mueller, T.; Lomeli, R.; Scara, G.; Ko, A.; Delaney, K.; Wissotski, M.; Lopez, G.; Campos, D.; Braidotti, M.; Ashley, E.; Golser, W.; Kim, H.; Lee, S.; Lin, J.; Dujmic, Z.; Kim, W.; Talag, J.; Zuccolo, A.; Fan, C.; Sebastian, A.; Kramer, M.; Spiegel, L.; Nascimento, L.; Zutavern, T.; Miller, B.; Ambroise, C.; Muller, S.; Spooner, W.; Narechania, A.; Ren, L.; Wei, S.; Kumari, S.; Faga, B.; Levy, M. J.; McMahan, L.; Van Buren, P.; Vaughn, M. W.; Ying, K.; Yeh, C.-T.; Emrich, S. J.; Jia, Y.; Kalyanaraman, A.; Hsia, A.-P.; Barbazuk, W. B.; Baucom, R. S.; Brutnell, T. P.; Carpita, N. C.; Chaparro, C.; Chia, J.-M.; Deragon, J.-M.; Estill, J. C.; Fu, Y.; Jeddeloh, J. A.; Han, Y.; Lee, H.; Li, P.; Lisch, D. R.; Liu, S.; Liu, Z.; Nagel, D. H.; McCann, M. C.; SanMiguel, P.; Myers, A. M.; Nettleton, D.; Nguyen, J.; Penning, B. W.; Ponnala, L.; Schneider, K. L.; Schwartz, D. C.; Sharma, A.; Soderlund, C.; Springer, N. M.; Sun, Q.; Wang, H.; Waterman, M.; Westerman, R.; Wolfgruber, T. K.; Yang, L.; Yu, Y.; Zhang, L.; Zhou, S.; Zhu, Q.; Bennetzen, J. L.; Dawe, R. K.; Jiang, J.; Jiang, N.; Presting, G. G.; Wessler, S. R.; Aluru, S.; Martienssen, R. A.; Clifton, S. W.; McCombie, W. R.; Wing, R. A.; Wilson, R. K. (2009). "The B73 Maize Genome: Complexity, Diversity, and Dynamics". Science. 326 (5956): 1112–1115. doi:10.1126/science.1178534.
  10. 1 2 Couzin-Frankel, Jennifer (2002). "Breakthrough of the Year: Small RNAs". sciencemag.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-22.
  11. ↑ "Robert A. Martienssen". people.embo.org. Heidelberg: European Molecular Biology Organization.
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