Joanne Chory

Chory was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1955. Her Lebanese parents raised her along with her four brothers and one sister. She began her upper-level education at Oberlin College in Ohio where she graduated with a degree in biology with honors. She then continued her post graduate education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It is here where she received her PhD with Samuel Kaplan as her thesis advisor. In 1988 she joined the Salk Institute as an assistant professor. Chory eventually married her husband, Stephen Worland, with whom she has two adopted children. In 2004, Chory was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. She struggled with the disease for well over a decade, but with the help of medications and a brain implant to help regulate her movement, she continued her genetic research. Along with her passion for genetics, Chory strived to inspire young women to become scientists and constantly worked to improve the field for women. Chory died from complications of Parkinson's disease in La Jolla, California, on November 12, 2024, at the age of 69. == Career and research ==

Chory focused her research on finding a way to optimize plant growth to sustain a growing human population. She used Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism, but her purpose was to optimize all plant growth and not just that of A. thaliana itself. She mutated the genes of the model organism and used the results to understand the effects that these mutations have. She approached this information from various directions including using genetics, genomics, cell biology, x-ray crystallography, biochemistry, and ecology. She made strides in understanding light sensitivity and hormones in these plants. She used this knowledge to optimize growth in other plants in hopes that the work will help sustain an ever-growing human population. Light signals are required for the induction and regulation of many developmental processes in plants. She participated in research dissecting this complex process by isolating mutations that alter light-regulated seedling development in Arabidopsis. Her work identified mutants that are deficient in the phytochrome photoreceptors and in nuclear-localized repressors and also revealed that steroid hormones control light-regulated seedling development. Dr. Chory's lab has been involved in the manipulation of the biosynthetic pathway for these steroids that altered the growth and development of plants and identification of the putative steroid receptor, a transmembrane receptor kinase. Her group has also contributed towards the understanding of chloroplast to nuclear retrograde signaling and plant shade avoidance responses. ==Awards and honors==

• 2024 Wolf Prize in Agriculture • 2024 Benjamin Franklin Medal • 2020 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize • 2019 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research • 2018 Gruber Prize in Genetics • 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences • 2015 Elected to the American Philosophical Society • 2012 Genetics Society of America Medal • 2011 Elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society • 2009 Elected Foreign Associate, Académie des Sciences, France • 2008 Member, German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina • 2006 Associate Member, EMBO • 2005 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science • 2004 Kumho Award in Plant Molecular Biology • 2003 Scientific American 50: Research Leader in Agriculture • 2000 L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science • 1999 Elected Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences • 1998 Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences • 1997 Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute • 1995 Charles Albert Schull Award, awarded by American Society of Plant Biologists • 1994 NAS Award for Initiatives in Research ==References==