Sarah Hake

Last updated
Sarah Carter Hake
PhD
Sarah Hake, 2007 (cropped).jpg
Sarah Hake, in 2007.
Education Grinnell College
Washington University in St. Louis
Known forCloning knotted1 a founding member of the homeobox gene family. [1]
SpouseDon [2]
AwardsStephen Hales prize
Scientific career
Fields Plant Biology
Institutions USDA
Thesis The genome of Zea mays : its organization and homology to related grasses  (1980)
Doctoral advisor Virginia Walbot
Website pgec.berkeley.edu/sarah-c-hake-lab

Sarah Hake is an American plant developmental biologist and the former director of the USDA's Plant Gene Expression Center in Albany, California. [3] In 2009, she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. [4]

Contents

Early life and education

Hake lived in Iowa until she was 10 years old and then moved to California. She attended Grinnell College, graduating in 1975. [3] As an undergraduate, she accompanied a professor to the Botanical Garden in St. Louis, convincing her to study plant biology. [2] After working as a waitress for a year after college, she was accepted into the PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis, where she completed her PhD with agriculturist Virginia Walbot. [5] She studied, among other things, the proportion of the maize genome present as multiple copies of DNA. [2] She met geneticist Michael Freeling when she was a graduate student and impressed by his research, which was considered outside the range of traditional genetic research at the time. Hake wrote an NIH proposal to work as a postdoc in his lab at the University of California, Berkeley cloning the gene ADH1. [2] After cloning the ADH1 gene, Hake and Freeling wrote and received a second grant to clone the Knotted1 gene, [2] which they succeeded in doing in 1989. [6]

After completing her postdoc, she was hired as principal investigator at the USDA Plant Gene Expression Center in Albany, CA. Until 2020, she served as the director for the center and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. [3] She retired in 2020 and is currently Adjunct Professor Emerita. [3]

Research

Hake considers her most important scientific contribution to be the cloning of Knotted1, the first cloned plant gene with an effect on development. [5] [1] Postdocs working in her lab have gone on to clone other genes controlling maize development, including terminal ear1, [7] barren inflorescence2, [8] fasciated ear2, [9] tangled, [10] and indeterminate spikelet1. [11] [5]

Recognition

Personal life

Hake had two children while she was a postdoc. [5] Since she was a postdoc at UC-Berkeley, Hake and her family live on the Gospel Flat Farm near Bolinas, California. [2]

References

  1. 1 2 Vollbrecht, Erik; Veit, Bruce; Sinha, Neelima; Hake, Sarah (1991). "The developmental gene Knotted-1 is a member of a maize homeobox gene family". Nature. 350 (6315): 241–243. Bibcode:1991Natur.350..241V. doi:10.1038/350241a0. PMID   1672445. S2CID   4328310.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Plant biologist, farmer, and grandmother: an interview with Sarah Hake". UC Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Sarah C. Hake". Dept of Plant & Microbial Biology; University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2026-01-18.
  4. 1 2 "Sarah Hake". National Academy of Sciences website. Retrieved 2026-01-18.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "ASPB Legacy Society Founding Members : Sarah Hake" (PDF). Aspb.org. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
  6. ↑ Hake, Sarah; Vollbrecht, Erik; Freeling, Michael (1989). "Cloning Knotted, the dominant morphological mutant in maize using Ds2 as a transposon tag". The EMBO Journal. 8 (1): 15–22. doi:10.1002/j.1460-2075.1989.tb03343.x. PMC   400767 . PMID   16453866.
  7. ↑ Veit, Bruce; Briggs, Steven P.; Schmidt, Robert J.; Yanofsky, Martin F.; Hake, Sarah (1998). "Regulation of leaf initiation by the terminal ear 1 gene of maize". Nature. 393 (6681): 166–168. Bibcode:1998Natur.393..166V. doi:10.1038/30239. PMID   9603518. S2CID   205000323.
  8. ↑ McSteen, P.; Hake, S. (2001). "Barren inflorescence2 regulates axillary meristem development in the maize inflorescence". Development. 128 (15): 2881–91. doi:10.1242/dev.128.15.2881. PMID   11532912.
  9. ↑ Taguchi-Shiobara, F.; Yuan, Z.; Hake, S.; Jackson, D. (2001). "The fasciated ear2 gene encodes a leucine-rich repeat receptor-like protein that regulates shoot meristem proliferation in maize". Genes & Development. 15 (20): 2755–2766. doi:10.1101/gad.208501. PMC   312812 . PMID   11641280.
  10. ↑ Smith, L. G.; Hake, S.; Sylvester, A. W. (1996). "The tangled-1 mutation alters cell division orientations throughout maize leaf development without altering leaf shape". Development. 122 (2): 481–9. doi:10.1242/dev.122.2.481. PMID   8625799.
  11. ↑ Chuck, G.; Meeley, R. B.; Hake, S. (1998). "The control of maize spikelet meristem fate by the APETALA2-like gene indeterminate spikelet1". Genes & Development. 12 (8): 1145–1154. doi:10.1101/gad.12.8.1145. PMC   316712 . PMID   9553044.
  12. ↑ "Stephen Hales Prize". American Society of Plant Biologists.
  13. ↑ "Historic Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science". Aaas.org.
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