Richard Anthony Jefferson
| Richard Jefferson | |
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Richard Jefferson, 2010
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| Born | Richard Anthony Jefferson |
| Residence | Australia |
| Nationality | United States of America; Australia |
| Citizenship | United States of America; Australia |
| Alma mater | |
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| Awards | Scientific American 50 |
| Website | www |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | DNA Transformation of Caenorhabditis elegans Development and Application of a New Gene Fusion System (Cloning, Chimeric, Sequence) (1985) |
| Doctoral advisor | David I. Hirsh, William B. Wood |
Richard Anthony Jefferson (born 1956) is an American-born molecular biologist and social entrepreneur who developed the widely used reporter gene system GUS, conducted the world's first biotech crop release, proposed the Hologenome theory of evolution, pioneered Biological Open Source and founded The Lens. He is founder of the social enterprise Cambia and a Professor of Biological Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology. In 2003 he was named by Scientific American as one of the world's 50 most influential technologists, and is renowned for his work on making science-enabled innovation more widely accessible. He was profiled in 'Open & Shut: The Basement Interviews', and other major media, including in an Economist Feature 'Grassroots Innovator' in 2001.
Born in Santa Cruz, California, Jefferson studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara at the College of Creative Studies, and obtained his BA (Molecular Genetics) in 1978. He then moved to the University of Colorado Boulder for his Ph.D., where he first developed the GUS reporter system, isolating, sequencing and characterizing the first microbial glucuronidase, and creating transgenic technology for Caenorhabditis elegans
As a postdoctoral researcher he worked at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge, England: there he adapted the GUS assay for the use in plants. His GUS system was a breakthrough in plant molecular sciences, useful for the development of efficient transformation methods for crop plants, and cell and developmental biology. In 1986-87 he sent all the components of the GUS system (DNA and strains) together with a comprehensive users' manual to nearly a thousand labs worldwide, before publication, pioneering a biological open source paradigm and a rapid uptake of the technology. The GUS system and its novel mode of dissemination was said to be essential for development of transformation of the most important crops, including soybean, maize, cotton and rice. The work has been cited in the primary literature almost 15,000 times., and has been licensed by every major company in crop genetics.
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