In October 2009, Dr. Beachy was selected to be Director of the newly-organized National Institute of Food and Agriculture, NIFA (www.nifa.usda.gov) . He continues to maintain an active lab at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Below are some recent highlights from his lab:

Dr. Beachy recently published a commentary in Science entitled “Radically rethinking agriculture for the 21st century”, Science 327:833-834.

Other recent publications include:

Ordiz, M.I., Magnenat, L., Barbas III, C.F., and Beachy, R.N. 2010, Negative regulation of the RTBV promoter by designed zinc finger proteins, Plant Mol Biol 72: 621-630.

Ordiz, M.I., Yang, J., Barbazuk, W.B., and Beachy, R.N. 2010. Functional analysis of the acidic domain of RF2a, a rice b-ZIP protein. Plant Biotechnol J 8: 1-10.

Berg, H. and Beachy, R.N. 2008. Fluorescent protein applications in plants. Methods Cell Biol 85: 153-177.

Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research, Inc.

Developing a chemically regulated gene switch system to control plant gene expression for agriculture biotechnology

This project is a component of a research plan in support of a larger project to develop a viable plant gene switch system (PGSS) that will enhance commercial opportunities in agricultural biotechnology.

Developing Camelina sativa as a nonfood crop and platform for production of value-added biotechnology products

We propose to develop Camelina sativa as a nonfood industrial crop for Missouri farmers and industrial users. The new crop must be adapted to growth and high yields suitable for Missouri farmers. Finally, the crop should be developed to reduce unwanted spread and growth of proprietary materials. This is a collaborative project that brings together basic sciences, biotechnology, and plant breeding.