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Professor June Nasrallah

June Nasrallah is the Barbara McClintock Professor of Plant Biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She received a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Biology from the American University of Beirut and a PhD degree in Genetics from Cornell University.

Dr. Nasrallah’s research interests are in the general area of plant reproductive biology with a focus on self-incompatibility, a self/non-self discrimination system that prevents self-fertilization and thereby promotes outbreeding in many plant species with perfect flowers. In collaboration with her husband, Mikhail Nasrallah (also a Professor of Plant Biology at Cornell University), she has used methods of genetics, cell biology, biochemistry, and molecular biology to identify highly polymorphic receptors and ligands that are expressed in the female and male parts of the flower and that interact to cause recognition and rejection of genetically-related pollen. This work and more recent studies of the genetic basis of evolutionary switches from out-crossing to self-fertility have potent implications for understanding the evolution of plant mating systems and also have practical applications in crop improvement.

Dr. Nasrallah’s research has been funded by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. She has published close to 100 primary research articles, reviews, and book chapters. Her work has been cited in prestigious scientific journals such as Science and Nature, and she has been invited to speak at many universities and scientific conferences in and outside the U.S.A.

Dr. Nasrallah has served on the editorial boards of several journals and has recently joined the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For her pioneering work in elucidating the molecular basis of self-incompatibility, she was awarded the Martin Gibbs Medal from the American Society of Plant Biologists in 2003 and in the same year, she was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Sample of Academician's Research

Early stages in the development of the male gametophyte in A. thaliana. Image taken 40 minutes after compatible pollen was transfered to the stigmatic surface.

In a 2002 Science article Prof. Nasrallah and co-workers presented results of their study on the underlying genetic causes of transitions from cross-fertilizing to self-fertilizing mating systems.

They showed that gene transfer of the stigma receptor kinase SRK and its pollen-borne ligand SCR from one S-locus haplotype of the self-incompatible and cross-fertilizing Arabidopsis lyrata is sufficient to impart self-incompatibility phenotype in self-fertile Arabidopsis thaliana, which lacks functional orthologs of these genes.
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