James A. Birchler is an American biologist who is currently Curators' Professor at University of Missouri where he studies gene dosage, polyploidy, and cytogenetics in both maize and drosophila.
After completing his degree at EIU in 1972, ultimately majoring in biology with a minor in zoology, he moved to Indiana University Bloomington where he studied maize dosage effects using B chromosomes with Drew Schwartz, graduating in 1977.
[5] Between 1978 and 1985 he worked as a postdoc studying gene dosage mechanisms in fruit flies, first at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with Ed Grell, and then at the University of California, Berkeley with Kenneth Paigen.
Birchler and his lab have also leveraged this tool and maize B-A chromosomal translocations to study the function and inactivation of centromeres.
Birchler's lab also developed the first engineered minichromosomes in plants, by using telomere repeat sequences to truncate B chromosomes in maize.