03.2020 | THE SCIENTIST 49CAREER TITLES/AWARDS
Adjunct Professor, Division of Biological Sciences,
University of California, San Diego
Director, Plant Biology Laboratory, The Salk Institute
for Biological Sciences
Member of the US National Academy of Sciences
Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and
Scientific Research (2019)
Gruber Genetics Prize (2018)
Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2018)
Genetics Society of America Medal (2012)
Kumho Award in Plant Molecular Biology (2004)
L’Oréal–UNESCO Award for Women in Science (2000)
Greatest Hits
- Discovered that theDET1 gene was responsible for
light-mediated responses in plants - Revealed the role of brassinosteroid hormones in light signaling
- Made breakthroughs in understanding how the plant hormone
auxin regulates growth and development - Helped develop the Harnessing Plants Initiative to
combat climate change
married in 1987, and then moved to California, where Chory
became an assistant professor at Salk in 1988 and an associate
professor in 1994. Later, they adopted two children: Katie in
1995, and Joe in 1997.
At Salk, Chory continued to work on DET1 and on
Arabidopsis plants with a slightly different genetic alteration:
a mutation in the related DET2 gene. Her experiments with
this mutant led her to the discovery that plant hormones called
brassinosteroids are associated with light signaling. While
brassinosteroids had been discovered in the 1970s, their role in
growth and development was unclear. Work by Chory and others
confirmed that brassinosteroids are a distinct class of hormones
that help control light-regulated plant development. Over the next
15 years, Chory uncovered the entire pathway by which this takes
place, from the activation of receptors in the plant cell membrane
to the hormones’ effects on transcription factors in the nucleus.
“It really cannot be overestimated how huge a contribution
that is. It’s really at the very highest level,” says Detlef Weigel,
an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for
Developmental Biology and one of Chory’s longtime collaborators.
“If this discovery had been made not in the plant system, but in
the animal system, it certainly would have been honored with a
Nobel Prize.”
Chory has also studied how the biosynthesis of auxin, a key
plant hormone that helps regulate growth and development, is
necessary for plants to find sunlight and avoid shade in order
to grow. “Plants really have to look at light for information,”
she says. “They know where they are on the Earth based on the
color of light.... They can tell you when the middle of the day
is versus the end of the day based on the color of the red and
far-red part of the spectrum, and they know when it’s morning
because there’s a lot of blue light in the spectrum. Plants are very
attuned to the light environment.”TENDING TO SEEDLINGS
“Joanne is probably the most influential plant biologist
of the modern era,” says Steven K ay, a molecular geneticist
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who
has collaborated with Chory on circadian clock-associated
pathways in plants. “She’s an incredibly rigorous scientist....
But at the same time, she brings with that an incredible
warmth and commitment to collegiality and to training.”
Chory has mentored numerous students in her lab at Salk
and as an adjunct professor at the University of California, San