Individual Listing

4158 BATCHELOR HALL, KEEN HALL
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521

Ellstrand, Norman C

Professor of Genetics & Geneticist

College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Botany & Plant Sciences


Biography

At age 6 Norm Ellstrand wowed his parents by accurately identifying pronghorn antelopes during a vacation to South Dakota. After receiving his B.S. in Biology at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he was trained as a plant evolutionary geneticist, receiving a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1978. At UCR, his research has evolved to focus on applied plant population genetics. His current research emphasis is on the consequences of gene flow from domesticated plants to their wild relatives, including the escape of engineered genes. He has published his first book on that topic. Although he secretly wants to write a novel, he has had fun doing science. He has written over 100 peer-reviewed papers, has presented his research to Congressional staff, participated in a number of activities of the National Research Council (including the recently published NRC study of environmental impacts associated with the commercialization of transgenic plants), and lived in Sweden for four months on a Fulbright Fellowship. Norm's primary undergraduate teaching effort has been "Human Heredity for Non-majors" because he believes that non-scientists should learn that science is important, interesting, and intuitive (and fun!). All of those who received a Ph.D. under his guidance are involved in science based careers in industry, the public sector, and academia. In his spare time, Norm helps create new units at UCR, two examples are UCR's Center for Conservation Biology and its nascent Biotechnology Impacts Center (of which he is Director). He is married to Dr. Tracy Kahn, Curator of UCR's Citrus Variety Collection. Their son, Nathan, a student at Riverside's Poly High School, is considering politics, law, and theme park design as possible careers.

Former Institution

 Duke University

Degrees

BS Biology 1974

University of Illinois

PhD Biology 1978

University of Texas

Awards

2010 Guggenheim Fellowships
2009 Botanical Society of America, Merit Award
2004 Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award, UCR
2000 AAAS Fellow
1998 Distinguished speaker, 42nd Ecological Genetics Group Meeting, St. Andrews, United Kingdom
1993 Fulbright Fellow
1992 National Science foundation Mid-Career Fellowship in Environmental Biology


Research Area

Norm Ellstrand has two interlocking research interests: (1) THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GENE FLOW AS AN EVOLUTIONARY FORCE: Gene flow is a largely neglected, but potentially important, factor in evolution. His research group has demonstrated that plant interpopulation gene flow rates were much higher than previously anticipated and that these rates vary substantially from population to population. (2) APPLIED PLANT POPULATION GENETICS. Presently, the following issues are under scrutiny in his lab: (a) gene flow and hybridization as factors in plant conservation, (b) the evolutionary consequences of spontaneous hybridization between domesticated plants and their wild relatives, (c) the evolutionary consequences of domestication, and (d) the consequences of transgene flow.

Publications

Ellstrand NC, Elam DR. 1993. Population genetic consequences of small population size: implications for plant conservation. Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics 24: 217-242

Ellstrand NC, Prentice HC, Hancock JF. 1999. Gene flow and introgression from domesticated plants into their wild relatives. Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics 30:539-563

Ellstrand, NC, Schierenback, K. 2000. Hybridization as a stimulus for the evolution of invasiveness in plants? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97:7043-7050

Ellstrand, N. C. 2001. When transgenes wander, should we worry? Plant Physiol. 125: 1543-1545.

Ellstrand, N. C. 2003. Dangerous Liaisons? When Cultivated Plants Mate with Their Wild Relatives. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD, 244 p. http://www.press.jhu.edu

Ellstrand, N. C. 2003. Going to “Great Lengths” to prevent the escape of genes that produce specialty chemicals. Plant Physiol. 132: 1770-1774.

Hegde S. G., J. D. Nason, J. Clegg, and N. C. Ellstrand. 2006. The evolution of California’s wild radish has resulted in the extinction of its progenitors. Evolution 60: 1187-1197.

Burger, J. C., S. Lee., and N. C. Ellstrand. 2006. Origin and genetic structure of feral rye in the western United States. Molecular Ecology 15: 2527-2539.

74. Elam, D.R., Ridley, C E., Goodell, K., Ellstrand, N.C. 2007. Population size and relatedness affect fitness of a self-incompatible invasive plant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Vol. 104: p.549-552. (Refereed)

75. Ellstrand, N., Garner, L.C., Hegde, S.G., Guadagnuolo, R., Blancas, L. 2007. Spontaneous hybridization between maize and teosinte . Journal of Heredity. Vol. 98: p.183-187. (Refereed)

76. Burger, J.C., Holt, J.S., Ellstrand, N. 2007. Rapid phenotypic divergence of feral rye from domesticated cereal rye. Weed Science. Vol. 55: p.204-271. (Refereed)


77. Schierenbeck, K.A., Ellstrand, N.C., Blosser, G. 2007. Spatiotemporal patterns in the non-native flora of California. Madroño. Vol. 54: p.105-116. (Refereed)

78. Schierenbeck, K.A., Ellstrand, N.C. 2008. Hybridization and the evolution of invasiveness in plants and other organisms . Biological Invasions. 13p. (Refereed)

79. Ridley, C.E., Kim, S., Ellstrand, N.C. 2008. Bi-directional history of hybridization in California wild radish Raphanus sativus (Brassicaceae) as revealed by chloroplast DNA. American Journal of Botany. Vol. 95: p.1437-1442. (Refereed)