Dr. Michael Axtell

Biography

Michael Axtell is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Penn State University, where he holds the Louis Hedwig Sternberg Chair in Plant Biology. His research focuses on the roles of small RNAs in regulating gene expression in plants, emphasizing their importance in developmental programs. He employs diverse plant species to study the classes of genes that produce small RNAs, which were largely unrecognized until the turn of the century, and explores how these molecules function as sequence-specific repressors of genes. Axtell's work aims to address fundamental unknowns about small RNA functions using advanced techniques in genetics, molecular biology, and genomics, particularly in the context of plant evolution. He completed his B.A. in Biology at Ithaca College in 1998 and went on to receive his Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, followed by postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2003 to 2006.

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Awards