Steven A Whitham

Steve has been working in the field of molecular plant pathology since he began graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley in 1990. During his graduate work in Barbara Baker's lab, he cloned the N gene from tobacco, which confers resistance to tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). N was the first virus resistance gene to be isolated, and it was also the first member of the TIR-NBS-LRR family of resistance genes to be discovered. He showed that N could be transferred to tomato where it also functioned to confer resistance to TMV. As a post-doctoral fellow in Jim Carrington's lab, Steve developed selectable viruses that he used in large-scale genetic screens for Arabidopsis mutants with altered virus susceptibility phenotypes. This work led to the identification of a novel type of virus resistance and the cloning of the RTM2 and eventually RTM3 genes that restrict tobacco etch virus movement in Arabidopsis. Following his postdoc, Steve moved to the Torrey Mesa Research Institute where he began work on using expression profiling to understand plant-virus interactions. At Iowa State University, his research has focused on developing virus-based tools for analysis of gene functions in crop plants with a focus on soybean and corn, functional genomics of plant-virus interactions, and molecular determinants of soybean-soybean rust interactions. He was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016. He teaches courses in plant-microbe interactions, molecular plant pathology, and virology.

Area of Expertise: Plant Virology, Plant Genomics, Soybean Rust