Robert Anthony Martienssen (born December 21, 1960)[2] is a British plant biologist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute–Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator,[4] and professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, US.
[5][6][7][8] Robert Martienssen attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge,[2] completing his BA in 1982 and continuing on to his PhD in 1986 on the molecular genetics of alpha-amylase gene families in common wheat,[9] supervised by David Baulcombe.
He discovered that small pieces of RNA, in association with proteins of the Argonaute family, silence transposons in seeds so that gene expression remains stable from one generation to the next.
He has extended his epigenetic studies from seeds to pollen, and his discoveries have implications for plant breeding — including hybrid cloning — and the development of biofuels.
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