Ronald L. Phillips
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ronald L. Phillips | |
|---|---|
| Born | United States |
| Alma mater | Purdue University |
| Awards | Wolf Prize in Agriculture, AAAS Fellow |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cytogenetics, plant biology |
| Institutions | University of Minnesota |
| Thesis | "Cytogenetic studies of recombination in reciprocal crosses and the location of genes in Zea mays L." (1966) |
| Doctoral advisor | Charles Burnham |
Ronald L. Phillips (1940 – 25 August 2023)[1] was an American biologist and a regents professor at the University of Minnesota.[2] In 1985 he was elected a fellow and the American Association for the Advancement of Science[3] and in 1991 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.[4]
Phillips completed his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Purdue University. After completing his master's degree, moved to the University of Minnesota where he studied maize cytogenetics advised by Charles Burnham,[5] graduating in 1966. After completing his PhD, he spent a short time as a postdoc at Cornell University. Since 1967, he has been a professor at the University of Minnesota. Officially retiring in 2010, he is now Regents Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota.[6]
Research
Ronald L. Phillips was the first to generate whole corn plants from cells grown in culture, which laid the foundation for, and sparked, a new industry, using cell-culture methods to genetically modify corn plants and other cereals. The corn cell line which is most widely used for genetic modification of corn has greatly accelerated the improvement of corn, as food, feed and fuel.[6]
His research program at the University of Minnesota was one of the early programs in modern plant biotechnology related to agriculture. Research in the Phillips laboratory have further led to the identification of cells and plants with increased levels of essential amino acids and the development of an efficient DNA sequence mapping system used by plant scientists in genomics research.[6]
He found was possible to introgress individual maize chromosomes into oat, where they were stably inherited. His lab generated a set nine oat lines each carrying the complete oat genome plus one maize chromosome[7]
