Gwyn Beattie

Gwyn A. Beattie is the Robert Earle Buchanan Distinguished Professor of Bacteriology for Research and Nomenclature at Iowa State University, working in the areas of plant pathology and microbiology. Her father worked at Sandia National Laboratories.

Beattie participated in the American Academy of Microbiology's colloquium How Microbes Can Help Feed the World, published as proceedings in 2012. As a leader of the Phytobiomes steering committee and the Phytobiomes Roadmap Writing Workshop held at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in 2015, she helped to develop the term phytobiome, and to publish Phytobiomes: A Roadmap for Research and Translation (2016).

Beattie has served two terms as the Chair of the American Phytopathological Society's Public Policy Board beginning in 2014, with her second term ending as of August 2020. She has served on the Board of Directors of the International Alliance for Phytobiomes Research (Phytobiomes Alliance), beginning with its formation in 2016. While broadly applicable, it is likely to be of particular important for the least developed countries.

Research Beattie is internationally recognized for her work on the ecology of phytopathogenic bacteria and their use of environmental signaling. She has explored the ways in which plant leaves respond to environmental cues, and the genomics underlying microbial responses on and within plant leaves. Using the model organism Pseudomonas syringae, she has studied bacterial perception of leaf surfaces and interiors.

Beattie's group has developed a model organism with genetic tractability (the potential for genetic manipulation using genetic engineering), for bacterial wilt which is caused by Erwinia tracheiphila in Cucurbitaceae (gourds). By understanding bacterial wilt etiology, the researchers hope to develop ecologically based biocontrol management strategies for crops in the Midwest and Northeast U.S. 2020, APS Fellow, American Phytopathological Society

Selected publications