Biography

James A. Birchler is Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri. He joined the faculty at the University of Missouri in 1991. Research interests of his laboratory include structure and behavior of chromosomes, centromere epigenetics, heterosis, polyploidy and aneuploidy using maize as the model organism. Artificial/synthetic chromosome platforms in maize have been developed. In general, the laboratory is interested in the consequences of dosage sensitive gene regulatory mechanisms in multicellular eukaryotes and their implications for the phenotype and evolutionary processes. Birchler has served as a mentor for Honors research.