Christopher Roland Somerville is a Canadian-American biologist known as a pioneer of ''

Arabidopsis thaliana ''Arabidopsis thaliana'', the thale cress, mouse-ear cress or arabidopsis, is a small plant from the mustard family (Brassicaceae), native to Eurasia and Africa. Commonly found along the shoulders of roads and in disturbed land, it is generally ...

'' research. Somerville is currently Professor Emeritus at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and a Program Officer at the

Open Philanthropy Project Open Philanthropy is an American philanthropic advising and funding organization focused on cost-effective, high-impact giving. Its current CEO is Alexander Berger. As of June 2025, Open Philanthropy has directed more than $4 billion in gran ...

Life and career

Somerville majored in Mathematics and completed a PhD in Genetics at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

, and then did postdoctoral research in the laboratory of William Ogren before serving as a faculty member at U. Alberta,

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley. He directed the Department of Plant Biology at the

Carnegie Institution for Science The Carnegie Institution for Science, also known as Carnegie Science and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is an organization established to fund and perform scientific research in the United States. This institution is headquartered in W ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and then the

Energy Biosciences Institute The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) is an organization dedicated to developing new sources of energy and reducing the impact of energy consumption. It was created in 2007 to apply advanced knowledge of biology to the challenges of responsible ...

at the

. He retired from the UC Berkeley faculty in 2017. Somerville was co-founder and Executive Chairman of Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. and a co-founder of Poetic Genetics,

LS9, Inc LS-9 Inc was a venture-funded company focused on producing diesel fuel from transgenic organisms. It launched in 2005, took in $81 million in investment, and in 2013 was sold to Renewable Energy Group for $40 million in cash and stock, and an add ...

, and Redleaf Biologics. Somerville has contributed to societal debates on the value of

transgenic crops Genetically modified crops (GM crops) are plants used in agriculture, the DNA of which has been modified using genetic engineering methods. Plant genomes can be engineered by physical methods or by use of ''Agrobacterium'' for the delivery of se ...

and biofuels. Together with

Elliot Meyerowitz Elliot Meyerowitz (born May 22, 1951) is an American biologist. Career Meyerowitz did his undergraduate work at Columbia University (A.B. in biology, 1973), where he worked part-time in the laboratory of Cyrus Levinthal on combined microscopic a ...

, Somerville was awarded the

Balzan Prize The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the b ...

in 2006 for his work developing the small mustard plant ''A. thaliana'' as a model. His interest in this plant was partly stimulated by a review article written by George Rédei. While at Michigan State University and funded by DOE, Somerville's research included developing transgenic plants which contained genes from two bacteria and enabled Arabidopsis to produce polyhydroxybutate (PHB), a biodegradable plastic. Companies already used PHB grown in bacteria, but it would be more cheaply produced from plants with the concept that potato would produce the plastic. Many trainees from Somerville's lab have started independent labs, including Mark Estelle, Peter McCourt, George W. Haughn, John W. Schiefelbein, Christoph Benning, Clint Chapple, Wolf-Dieter Reiter, John Browse, Sean Cutler, Dominique Bergmann, Seung Y. Rhee, Staffan Persson, Wolfgang Lukowitz, C. Stewart Gillmor, Jose Martinez-Zapater, Hong Zhang, Ruth Finkelstein, Micha Volokita, Barbara Moffatt, Kathy Wu, Jose Botella, Bertrand Lemieux, Erwin Grill, John Shanklin, Yves Poirier, Christianne nawrath, Susan Gibson, Deane Falcone, Koh Iba, Simon Turner, Pierre Broun, Sean Cutler, Joe Ogas, Wolf Scheible, Dario Bonetta, John Sedbrook, Heather Youngs, Farhah Assaad, Michelle Facette, Alex Paredez, Jose Estevez, Seth DeBolt, Thorsten Hamman, Ying Gu, Ian Wallace, Philipp Benz, Charles Anderson, and Adrienne Roeder. Somerville is a member of the U.S.

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

(1996), the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

(1991), and the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

(1993). Among the awards he has received are: the EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Award (2010);

(with

) (2006);

Genetics Society The Genetics Society is a British learned society. It was founded by William Bateson and Edith Rebecca Saunders in 1919 and celebrated its centenary year in 2019. It is therefore one of the oldest learned societies devoted to genetics. Its membe ...

, Mendel Medal (2004);

Biochemical Society The Biochemical Society is a learned society in the United Kingdom in the field of biochemistry, including all the cellular and molecular biosciences. It was founded in 1911 and acquired the existing '' Biochemical Journal'' the following year. T ...

, Hopkins Medal (2004); ASPB Gibbs Medal (1993); Humbolt Research Award (1992); ASPB Schull Award (1987);

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

Young Presidential Investigator Award (1984). He was awarded honorary degrees by the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

(2016);

(2012); Guelph

University A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

(2006);

Wageningen University Wageningen University & Research (also known as WUR) is a public university, public research university in Wageningen, Netherlands, specializing in life sciences with a focus on agriculture, technical and engineering subjects. It is a globally i ...

(1998);

(1997); Queens University (1993).

Media Appearances

Appeared in the Bill Nye the Science Guy episode entitled "Pollution Solutions". He presented his research on biodegradable plant-based plastics using the model plant Arabidopsis.

Research highlights

* Pioneered ‘biochemical genetics’ approach to problems in plant metabolism, including

photorespiration Photorespiration (also known as the oxidative photosynthetic carbon cycle or C2 cycle) refers to a process in plant physiology, plant metabolism where the enzyme RuBisCO oxygenates RuBP, wasting some of the energy produced by photosynthesis. Th ...

, lipid metabolism, and

cellulose Cellulose is an organic compound with the chemical formula, formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of glycosidic bond, β(1→4) linked glucose, D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important s ...

synthesis. * First map-based cloning of an ''A. thaliana'' gene * Lead development of

The Arabidopsis Information Resource The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) is a community resource and online model organism database of genetic and molecular biology data for the model plant ''Arabidopsis thaliana ''Arabidopsis thaliana'', the thale cress, mouse-ear cress ...

(TAIR) database and web resource

Selected publications

Review articles

* * * * *

Interviews and historical pieces

* * *

References

External links

Faculty page
with links to CV and list of awards
Google scholar profile

Royal Society page

Open Philanthropy Project page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Somerville, Chris Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Foreign members of the Royal Society 21st-century American biologists Year of birth missing (living people) Academic staff of the University of Alberta Michigan State University faculty University of Alberta alumni Stanford University faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty