Paula McSteen

Paula McSteen is a scientist known for her research on plant genetics. In 2020 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Education and career McSteen received her B.A. from the University of Dublin Trinity College and earned her Ph.D. in Plant Developmental Genetics in 1996 from the University of East Anglia. In 2010 she joined the faculty of the University of Missouri as an associate professor, having previously worked as an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University. As of 2021 she is a professor at the University of Missouri. She then moved to using corn as a genetic model. She has examined the role of multiple genes by corn, including research into bif2 barren inflorescence2 which plays a role in regulation of hormones needed during the development of corn. Through examination of corn that produced malformed ears, McSteen determined that the gene vt2, short for vanishing tassel2, was absent, which means reduced levels of the hormone auxin and leads to malformed ears of corn. In 2019, McSteen found the barren stalk2 gene, ba2, which impacts the development of the cells that give rise to ears of corn. In the course of learning about this gene, she found that this mutation had first been found in the 1930s, but then knowledge about its role was lost.

Selected publications

Awards and honors McSteen is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who cited her for "distinguished contributions to the field of plant genetics, particularly the role of the hormone, auxin, in maize reproductive development". In 2017 she received the L. Stadler Mid-Career Award from the Maize Genetics Corporation. In 2017 McSteen received the L. Stadler Mid-Career Maize Genetics Award.