Beyond my wildest expectations

With support from my parents, I fulfilled their and my expectations of graduating from college and becoming a scientist. My scientific career has focused on two organisms, Bacillus subtilis and Agrobacterium tumefaciens, and two experimental systems, aromatic amino acid synthesis and DNA transfer in bacteria and plants. Studies on B. subtilis emphasized the genetics and biochemistry of aromatic amino acid synthesis and the characterization of competence in DNA transformation. I carried out both as a postdoc at Stanford with Josh Lederberg. At the University of Washington, I continued these studies and then investigated how Agrobacterium transforms plant cells. In collaboration, Milt Gordon, Mary-Dell Chilton, and I found that this bacterium could transfer a piece of its plasmid into plant cells and thereby modify their properties. This discovery opened up a host of intriguing questions that we have tried to answer over the last 35 years.