Agriculture

Gene Robinson

Affiliation at the time of the award:

University of Illinois, USA

Award citation:

“for leading the genome revolution in the biology of honey bee populations”.

Prize share:

None

The honey bee plays a vital role sustaining agriculture and plant life on earth. About one-third of the food consumed by humanity is a direct product of pollination by honey bees of more than 100 important crops, including most of the world’s almonds, soybeans, buckwheat, and cotton. Their great importance to agriculture and their complex social structure make honey bees a critical subject for biological and agricultural research.

Gene Robinson, born in 1955, received a doctorate from Cornell University in 1986 and three years later joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where, since 2011 he has headed of the Carl W. Weiss Institute for Genomic Biology as well as the Institute for Bee Research, since 1990. Robinson is a pioneer in the application of genomics – the field of genetics that deals with the sum total of genetic material, the genome of living organisms – to study social behaviour. In addition, Robinson led the effort to sequence the genome (i.e., determining the order of the nucleic acids, the building blocks of the genetic code) of the honey bee. During his career, he has published (on his own, or together with colleagues) over 300 articles, trained 29 postdoctoral fellows and 23 PhD students. He has won prestigious awards from the American Entomological Association, the International Society for Animal Behaviour and the International Society for Behavioural Genetics.

Robinson led an international consortium with more than 170 researchers from 13 countries involved in the sequencing of the honey bee genome. As part of the honey bee genome study, Robinson led the team that discovered that the honey bee has a fully functioning methylation system. Methylation is a chemical process of great biological significance. It is the adding of a methyl group (CH3, a carbon atom connected to three hydrogen atoms) to any compound. The addition of methyl molecules to the DNA coil at different locations affects how an infinite number of the potential traits inherent in the hereditary load will actually be expressed. Robinson’s discovery has led to hundreds of studies examining the possibility of the use of insect epigenetics for insecticide. Epigenetics is the field that deals with genetic changes in the function of genes that do not involve altering the DNA sequences themselves. One of the possibilities for obtaining differences between two animals with the same DNA is the different locations of methyl groups across the DNA. This can be compared to two computers with the same hardware but with different software, which, therefore, function differently.

Robinson also used the honey bee to achieve a break-through with a genomic application in the study of social behaviour, and in doing so promoted this species, which is vital to agriculture, to an important and prominent position in neuroscience. Robinson eventually came to rephrase the problem of growing multi-annual crops in modern genomic terms. Alongside the basic biology of the honeybee, Gene Robinson is responsible for a useful study on the problem of colony breakdown disorder, i.e. the disappearance of bees from beehives or bee colonies, a phenomenon that threatens the global food supply. Gene Robinson made an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the honeybee, an understanding that has shaped the present and future of the world of bee-keeping. In addition, his impressive discoveries have also influenced other disciplines, including the science of social behaviour and mental disorders. Robinson has a dominant and unique influence on the biology of the honey bee, and his work has not been matched in research in other animals of agricultural importance.

Trudy Frances Charlene Mackay

Affiliation at the time of the award:

North Carolina State University, NC, USA

Award Citation:

“For pioneering studies on the genetic architecture of complex traits and the discovery of fundamental principles of quantitative genetics with broad applications for agricultural improvements”.

Prize Share:

None

It is now well recognized that the majority of traits of economic importance in animal and plant breeding (and traits related to most human diseases as well) are influenced by a large number of genes acting in complex regulatory networks. Trudy Mackay was among the first to realize this and throughout her career has used quantitative genetics to provide fundamental insight in the complex interplay between genes acting on complex traits as well as in understanding the interaction with the environment. Moreover, she was among the first to realize that the rapid developments in genomics allowed the integration of quantitative genetics with molecular details of genes interacting within complex regulatory networks.

Early in her career she already recognized the many possibilities a novel model organism like Drosophila offers towards this end. She developed a number of clever strategies like the use of transposable P-elements and high resolution mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL) by complementation testing in this model species. This allowed her to uncover fundamental genetic principles studying intriguing traits like life span, behavioral responses and alcohol tolerance. Principles proven to be applicable in a wide range of species and in areas from agriculture to human genetics. More recent, recognizing the possibilities whole genome sequence data would offer, she initiated the development of the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel, which has proven of invaluable importance to further unravel the architecture of complex genetic traits.

Trudy Mackay has been a key person in building the intellectual framework for modern quantitative genetics and she has explained these principles in numerous excellent reviews and by contributing to the major textbook in the field, “Introduction to Quantitative Genetics” by Falconer and Mackay. More recently she has been pioneering the concept of system genetics and enabled the first whole genome analysis using genomic selection, a fundamental tool that has revolutionized animal breeding. Combining genomic information with genomic selection is expected to further revolutionize improvement programs in animal as well as plant breeding.

Linda J. Saif

Affiliation at the time of the award:

The Ohio State University, USA

Award citation:

“for advancing animal and human health through research in virology and immunology”.

Prize share:

None

Dr. Saif, an exceptional virologist and immunologist, has focused her career on diseases that are of critical importance to agriculture, food safety and human health. Her discoveries of novel enteric and respiratory viruses of food animals and humans have led to her extensive contributions of fundamental knowledge of the gut-mammary immunologic axis and has provided new ways to design vaccines and vaccination strategies. Dr. Saif has discovered new paradigms of the complex way the immune system protects animals against intestinal infections. She has also discovered new viruses that cause intestinal diseases in livestock and subsequent ways to control them. Collectively, Dr. Saif’s scientific contributions have contributed immensely to the improvement of global food safety, food production as well as animal and human health. Dr. Saif has also served with diligence as a scientific advisor and mentor for a large number of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom have gone on to become prominent scientists and leading animal health experts in developed and developing countries around the world.

Sir David Baulcombe

Affiliation at the time of the award:

University of Cambridge, UK

Award citation:

“for pioneering discovery of gene regulation by small inhibitory RNA molecules in plants is of profound importance, not only for agriculture, but also for biology as a whole, including the field of medicine”.

Prize share:

None

David Baulcombe’s (born in 1952, Britain) pioneering discovery of gene regulation by small inhibitory RNA molecules in plants is one of the most remarkable discoveries in biology in recent times. He made his discoveries working with plant viruses, where he demonstrated how plants use these small RNA molecules to defend themselves against virus attack, through a mechanism now known as ‘gene silencing.’ Of equal importance, in practical terms, his work shows how viruses counter attack to overcome the defense mechanism used by plants. Through his discoveries, Dr. Baulcombe has revealed the potential for an entirely new approach to crop breeding of plants that are resistant to viruses. Even more importantly, he has led to an entirely new approach to the control of gene expression, with applications not only to plants, but also to animals, as well as to human medicine. As evidence of the scientific and practical significance of his research, in 2005, Sir Baulcombe was ranked as one of the ten most cited researchers in the world, in the plant and animal sciences.

A Fellow of the Royal Society, Dr. Baulcombe has served science and the scientific community generously and broadly, including as editor, or member of the editorial boards of the world’s ten leading scientific journals in plant and cell biology and genetics; as advisor in plant biology and genetics research to dozens of national and international institutes and programs worldwide; and as president of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology. Among his other awards, for his paradigm-shifting discoveries, Dr. Baulcombe was elected as a Foreign Associate of the U.S National Academy of Sciences (2005); received the Royal Medal from the Royal Society (2006); and shared the Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2008). In 2009, he was bestowed with one of] the highest British honor for the civil service, with a Knighthood. Dr. Baulcombe currently serves as Professor of Botany and Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Cambridge.