Chris J. Leaver

Chris Leaver
Born	Christopher John Leaver (1942-05-31) 31 May 1942
Institutions	University of Oxford Purdue University University of Edinburgh
Alma mater	Imperial College London (BSc, PhD)
Thesis	The correlation between nucleic acid synthesis and induced enzyme activity in plant tissue slices (1966)
Notable awards	FRS (1986) CBE FRSE EMBO member

Christopher John Leaver CBE FRS FRSE (born 31 May 1942) is a British biochemist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow, of St John's College, Oxford.

Education

Leaver was educated at Imperial College London 1960–66: BSc, then PhD in 1966 in Plant Physiology.

Research

Leaver's area of expertise is in plant biochemistry, development, plant physiology and signalling; before his current positions, he has at the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Purdue University and the University of Edinburgh.

Career

• Botanist Imperial College Hornsund Expedition, Spitzbergen, 1962 and Beerenberg Expedition, Jan Mayen, 1963.
• Fulbright Scholar, Purdue University, USA, 1966–68.
• University of Edinburgh 1969–90: Lecturer, then Reader 1980,
• SERC Senior Research Fellow 1985–90,
• Professor of Plant Molecular Biology 1986–1990.
• University of Oxford Sibthorpian Professor of Plant Science, 1990–2007.
• Head of Department 1991–2007.
• Fellow of St John’s College 1990–
• Emeritus Professor of Plant Science, University of Oxford 2008–

Awards and honours

Leaver was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986. His nomination reads

Distinguished for his contributions to unravelling the role of nucleic acids in the development of higher plants. Leaver was the first person to isolate nucleic acids from higher plants in 1964, and produced the first description of the pathway of cytoplasmic ribosomal RNA synthesis. He discovered a novel species of 4.5S RNA in chloroplast ribosomes, and with W, Bottomley developed the coupled transcription-translation system now used in the analysis of chloroplast DNA. He established that the synthesis of glyoxysomal enzymes in cucumber seedlings is under transcriptional control. His more recent and innovative work concerns the structure, information content and expression of the plant mitochondrial genome, a field he has pioneered. He was the first to isolate plant mitochondrial ribosomes, establish their unique RNA composition, and develop the standard system now used for protein synthesis by isolated plant mitochondria. His work has produced strong evidence linking the agriculturally important trait of cytoplasmic male sterility in maize and sorghum with mutations in the mitochondrial genome which lead to the production of variant polypeptides. As well as isolating several protein-encoding plant mitochondrial genes, he has identified, cloned and sequenced the first nuclear gene for a plant mitochondrial protein.