Chris Somerville

Chris Somerville moved from Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science to UC Berkeley in July 2007 to lead the development of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), which he subsequently directed until 2016. Somerville published more than 250 research papers in biochemistry and cell and molecular biology. His work was largely focused on elucidating the mechanisms by which the major storage and structural components of plants and bacteria were synthesized, and, in recent years, he also studied how such components could be depolymerized for use as feedstocks and synthons for production of fuels and chemicals. He was an early advocate for the use of Arabidopsis as a model organism and was an organizer of the international collaboration that sequenced the Arabidopsis genome. He and Elliot Meyerowitz (Caltech) shared the Balzan Prize for their role in establishing Arabidopsis as one of the most widely used model organisms. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London. Somerville was the recipient of many other awards and has been awarded six honorary doctorates. He now works in a philanthropy that supports basic and applied scientific research.  

Tilman, D., Socolow, R., Foley, J.A., Hill, J., Larson, E., Lynd, L., Pacala, S., Reilly, J., Searchinger, T., Somerville, C., Williams, R. (2009) Beneficial Biofuels—The Food,
Energy, and Environment Trilemma. Science, 325,270-271

Bleecker, A.B., Estelle, M., Somerville, C., Kende, H. (1988) A dominant mutation confers insensitivity to ethylene in Arabidopsis thaliana. Science 241,1086-1089

Somerville, C., Bauer, S., Brininstool, G., Facette, M., Hamann, T., Milne, J., Osborne, E., Paredez, A., Persson, S., Raab, T., Vorwerk, S., Youngs, H.  (2004) Towards a systems approach to understanding plant cell walls. Science  306, 2206-2211

Somerville, C., Youngs, H., Taylor, C., Davis, S., and Long, S.P. (2010). Feedstocks for lignocellulosic biofuels. Science 329, 790-792

Newman, T., de Bruijn, F.J., Green, P., Keegstra, K., Kende, H., McIntosh, L., Ohlrogge, J., Raikhel, N., Somerville, S., Thomashow, M., Retzel, E., Somerville, C.R. (1994) Genes galore: a summary of the methods for accessing the results from large-scale partial sequencing of anonymous Arabidopsis cDNA clones. Plant Physiol.106,1241-1255

Cutler, S.R., Ehrhardt, D.W., Griffitts, J.S., and Somerville, C.R. (2000) Random GFP::cDNA fusions enable visualization of subcellular structures in cells of Arabidopsis at a high frequency. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97,3718-3723

Somerville, C.R. (2006) Cellulose synthesis in higher plants. Annu. Rev. Cell Dev. Biol. 22,53-78

Carroll, A., Somerville, C.R. (2009) Cellulosic biofuels. Annu. Rev. Plant Biol. 160, 165-82

Haughn, G.W., Somerville, C.R. (1986) Sulfonylurea resistant mutants of Arabidopsis.  Molec. Gen. Genet. 204, 430-434

Estelle, M.A., Somerville, C.R. (1987)  Auxin-resistant mutants of Arabidopsis.  Molec. Gen. Genet. 206, 200-206

Arondel, V., Lemieux,  B., Hwang, I., Gibson, S., Goodman, H., Somerville, C.R. (1992) Map-based cloning of a gene controlling omega-3 fatty acid desaturation in Arabidopsis. Science 258,1353-1355

Wilson, R.N., Somerville, C.R. (1992) Gibberellin is required for flowering but not for senescence in Arabidopsis thaliana under short days. Plant Physiol. 100,403-408