John Doebley

Who is John Doebley?

John F. Doebley is an American botanical geneticist whose main area of interest is how genes drive plant development and evolution. He has spent the last two decades examining the genetic differences and similarities between teosinte and maize and has cloned the major genes that cause the visible differences between these two very different plants.

John Doebley began his undergraduate education as a biology major at West Chester State College in West Chester, Pennsylvania. However, after taking a class by a particularly interesting lecturer, he decided to switch his major to anthropology.

After he graduated with a degree in anthropology in 1974, he entered a master's programme in anthropology at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales. Upon completion of this degree in 1976, he began a PhD programme at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Here he worked with botany professor Hugh Iltis, travelling to Mexico to collect teosinte. Doebley published three papers on this research for his doctoral thesis and completed his degree in 1980.

Doebley then held two postdoctoral positions successively at North Carolina State University under the mentorship of Major Goodman and Ronald Sederoff, and began a research group at Texas A&M University.