# Transcript

Interviewer
Can you recall what your first memories of plants were and why you became interested in plants?
Chris Somerville
Yes well I grew up in a farming community in Northern Canada where my father is a veterinarian so I spent a lot of time on farms and I worked on farms during the school holidays and then when I went to university I worked in the forest service for five years, actually while I was an undergraduate, fighting fires.
I
So what did you do when you did your first degree - what subject was that in?
CS
Well I started in physics because I was curious about the basis of many physical phenomena but I switched to mathematics in my first year because I was intrigued by the power of mathematics to provide formulae that provide concise representations of principles. And then after my maths degree I was recruited by a professor in genetics to work on a research project involving human population dynamics.
I
Was that the point at which you first started working on plants then?
CS
No after getting several courses in chemistry and biology I became intrigued by bacterial molecular genetics so I did my PhD in the molecular genetics of bacteria. In the course of that I then married a plant breeder who had really introduced me to the issues in plants and she was very concerned and conveyed that to me that the world was unsustainable. So we sort of formulated the idea that we should collaborate and try and bring modern molecular methods to agriculture.
I
That's excellent. One of the first areas you worked on was photosynthesis and that plays a key role in terms of biofuels and I think it would be helpful if you could just say what your current job is and what does that actually entail.
CS
Yes, well most of my career I've been interested in how plants build their bodies and the bodies of plants are made mostly of polysaccharides and lipids and lignins - the three main components and my group works on identifying the enzymes that make these major components and understanding how they're regulated. But a few years ago I realised that my knowledge of how plants build their bodies could be useful in sort of examining the possibility of developing a large-scale biofuels industry. So about 5 years ago I sort of turned my research towards understanding the biofuels option and that really led to an engagement with a new community for me that is the community that's trying to address renewable energy issues and I moved to Berkeley a few years ago so we had people working on photovoltaic's and wind and photoelectric chemistry and biofuels and renewable energies - everything all wrapped into a big programme and so we now have I estimated about 1000 scientists altogether working on those topics here. Anyway we eventually needed money to support our research and we were able to attract several large grants, one from the energy company BP and one from the US Department of Energy that allowed us to fund several large centres here that work on these topics. And now I lead one of those centres, that's funded by BP with a focus on what we call energy biosciences, that is the application of modern biological sciences to the energy sector. So we are trying examine where the opportunities are to do that. And biofuels - cellulosic biofuels are one of those areas but we are looking for other topics as well.
I
So I guess in terms of having 1000 people working within the area of plant science, that's a massive group of people working on related projects.
CS
Actually they are not all working on plant science so in my institute, which is about 300 of the 1000, while we have economists, ecologists, environmental scientists, mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, chemists, biochemists, agronomists, meteorologists. These topics are very multidimensional. Cellulosic biofuels in particular is very multidimensional because it involves the intersection of chemical engineering and chemistry on the production side you may say with the environment and in land use and the impact on the environment. So we're trying to take a whole system approach to understanding the issues.