Mary-Dell Chilton
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Mary-Dell Chilton is a key founder of modern plant biotechnology. She was the first (1977) to demonstrate the presence of a fragment of Agrobacterium Ti plasmid DNA in the nuclear DNA of crown gall tissue. Her research on Agrobacterium also showed that the genes responsible for causing disease could be removed from the bacterium without adversely affecting its ability to insert its own DNA into plant cells and modify the plants genome. Dr. Chilton described what she had done as disarming the bacterial plasmid responsible for the DNA transfer. She and her collaborators produced the first genetically modified plants using Agrobacterium carrying the disarmed Ti plasmid (1983).
Dr. Chilton received her PhD from the University of Illinois. She has been recognized for her work with Agrobacterium tumefaciens by an honorary doctorate from the University of Louvaine, the John Scott Medal from the City of Philadelphia, membership in the National Academy of Sciences, and the Franklin Medal in Life Sciences from the Franklin Institute.
