by David E. Salt

About David E. Salt

David E. Salt is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that control the way plants acquire the mineral nutrients they require from the soil, along with the evolutionary forces that shape these mechanisms. Professor Salt has held faculty positions in the United States at Rutgers University, Northern Arizona University, and Purdue University, and is currently a Sixth Century Chair at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed papers, which have over seven thousand citations. These include papers published in such journals as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Plant Cell, and PLoS Genetics.

Genome

book Keywords for Environmental Studies

To many scientists and nonscientists alike the term “genome” sounds quite modern and perhaps even a little like science fiction. The contemporary glow surrounding “genome” may stem from its connection in people’s minds with the recent unraveling of the sequence of the human (Homo sapiens) genome—a “man on the moon” moment for most biologists. The controversies surrounding genetically modified foods (GMO) and human “gene therapy” also add a slightly sinister nature to this glow. However, as with many things that we perceive as modern, the term “genome” is in fact much older than we imagine, having arisen almost a century ago in the writings of Hans Winkler, professor of botany at the University of Hamburg, Germany (Winkler 1920). In this primary work, “genome” is defined as “the haploid chromosome set,” and, along with factors from the cytoplasm, it is described as encoding the complete biological framework of a species. A current definition of the term “genome” would read more like “the complete DNA sequence of one complete set of chromosomes of an individual organism.”