About

What this is all about

Blogging on everything from education, his own unique history and pursuit of academia to plant genomes and today’s newer approach to genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), Dr. Dennis debunks myths and clutter and includes personal insights and anecdotes making science and news a lively read.

Backgrounder

Dr. David Dennis, now retired, is an accomplished and well respected scientist and speaker in the ag-biotech field and industry.  Dr. Dennis is a published plant biologist and graduated from Leeds University (England) with a First Class Honours Degree in Botany, followed by a PhD in Biophysics for his work on the structure of cellulose microfibrils from land plants and marine seaweed.  David’s work was supervised by Prof. R.D. Preston and resulted in a paper published in Nature.

In 1959 David married Marjory Bowmer and accepted a postdoctoral position at the NRC (Ottawa, Canada), working on the synthesis of cellulose by the bacterium, Acetobacter xylinum.  Accepting a second postdoctoral position in the Department of Chemistry at UCLA, He worked in the laboratory of Dr. Charlie West where he elucidated the initial steps in the pathway for the biosynthesis of gibberellins, which are growth hormones found in plants.

In 1965, David returned to England accepting a position as a scientist in the research laboratory of Unilever Ltd (Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire) working on the senescence of plants and the regulatory mechanisms of plant metabolism with a focus on increasing the shelf life of plant products which lead to David’s first papers on the regulation of plant metabolism.

Dr. Dennis emigrated permanently to Canada in 1968 accepting the position of Associate Professor of Biology at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON).  He was promoted to Full Professor in 1974 and is now Professor Emeritus at Queen’s.  He  was also  a Visiting Scholar in 1974,in the Chemistry Department of UCLA, working on the regulation and compartmentation of plant enzymes and in 1982, David spent a year as a Visiting Scholar at the John Innes Research Institute in Norwich, England working in the laboratory of Dr. Harold Woolhouse on the regulation and comparmentation of plant enzymes.

With an established scientific background in plant biology, Dr. Dennis was made Head of the Department of Biology at Queen’s University (1984-1996).  In addition to his duties as Department Head, David served twice on Queen’s Senate and a number of its committees including national and provincial committees. He’s taught and mentored students from first year to graduate studies.  He was an editor of the journal “Plant Physiology” for many years and in 1991 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.   He is now professor emeritus at Queen’s.
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In 1996, Dr. Dennis  resigned from Queen’s to take the position of President and CEO of Performance Plants Inc., a start up ag-biotech technologies company, founded by David and three other professors from Queen’s Biology. The objective of the company was to develop second generation biotechnologies – plants resistant to environmental stresses such as drought and heat using the latest techniques of plant molecular biology.  Second generation ag-bio technologies differ significantly from first generation biotech which focuses on herbicide and insecticide tolerance, to protect crops from the environmental threats of weed and insect attack.

David has presented numerous invited talks at conferences world-wide. During his time at Performance Plants he became an advocate for genetically modified (GMO) plants and was invited on a media tour of the UK in 2008 where he was interviewed by John Humphreys on the BBC morning show and presented at the Science Media Center media to science writers from most of the major UK papers. Among his numerous speaking engagements, he was invited to address the UN Conference on Climate Change in Poznan, Poland in December 2008.

Research and Publication Record

David has published 121 papers in refereed journals and has also written numerous book chapters and reviews. His research was focussed on the biochemistry and molecular biology of enzymes involved in plant metabolism and the manner in which they are regulated. He also made a major contribution in demonstrating the manner in which these enzymes and pathways are isolated in different plant compartments.

He was sole author of a book entitled “The Biochemistry of Energy Utilization in Plants, Tertiary Level Biology” 1987 published by Blackie Press in London, UK.

He was senior editor of the book “Plant Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 1990 (Reprinted 1993). Longman Scientific and Technical Publications, Harlow, UK,  pp 529.

He was the senior editor of the book “Plant Metabolism” 1997. Addison, Wesley, Longman, Harlow UK pp631