Arthur R. Grossman

Arthur Robert Grossman (born 1950) is an American biologist whose research ranges across the fields of plant biology, microbiology, marine biology, Phytochemistry, and photosynthesis. He has been a Staff Scientist at Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Plant Biology since 1982, and holds a courtesy appointment as Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford. He has mentored more than fifteen PhD students and more than thirty post-doctoral fellows. Grossman was the recipient of the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal (National Academy of Sciences) in 2009 and the Darbaker Prize for work on microalgae (Botanical Society of America) in 2002. He is Co-Editor in Chief of Journal of Phycology, and has served on the editorial boards of major biological journals including the Annual Review of Genetics, Eukaryotic Cell, Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Molecular Plant among others. He has also served on many committees and panels that evaluate scientific directions for the various granting agencies, universities and government departments. He was elected the co-Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Photosynthesis in 2015, and will be Chair again in 2017. He also currently serves as Chief of Genetics at Solazyme Inc. which applies plant biology to create oils.

Grossman received his undergraduate degree in Biology with Honors, from Brooklyn College (1973), and his Ph.D. in 1978 from Indiana University.From 1978-1982 he was a postdoctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University, Department of Cell Biology with Nam-Hai Chua and joined the Department of Plant Biology of the Carnegie Institution for Science as a Staff Scientist in 1982.

Throughout his career, Grossman has focused on understanding the mechanism of microbial photosynthesis, and its role in areas ranging from the ocean environment to applications in biotechnology. Although he has worked with numerous model organisms, he is best known for his work with Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (C. reinhardtii), on which genome project he was co-PI.

• Aksoy, M., Pootakham, W., Grossman, A.R. (2014) Critical function of a Chlamydomonas reinhardtii putative vacuolar transporter chaperone during nutrient deprivation. Plant Cell. 26: 4214-29.
• Nowack, E., Grossman, A.R. (2012) The Import of the PsaE subunit of photosystem I into the recently established photosynthetic organelles of Paulinella chromatophora. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 109: 5340-5345.
• Merchant, S., Prochnik, S. and the Chlamydomonas Genome Project Team (Rokhsar and Grossman, Corresponding authors) (2007) Chlamydomonas reinhardtii genome reveals evolutionary insights into critical animal- and plant-associated functions. Science 318: 245-250.
• Cardol. P., Bailleul, B., Derelle, E., Béal, D., Rappaport, F., Breyton, C., Bailey, S., Wollman, F.-A., Grossman, A.R., Moreau, H., Finazzi, G. (2008) A novel adaptation of photosynthesis in the marine, picoeukaryote Ostreococcus sp. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105: 7881-6.
• Steunou, A.S., Bhaya, D., Bateson, M., Melendrez, M., Ward, D., Brecht, E., Peters, J.W., Kühl, K, Grossman, A.R. (2006) In Situ Analysis of Nitrogen Fixation and Metabolic Switching in Unicellular Thermophilic Cyanobacteria in Hot Spring Microbial Mat. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103: 2398-403.
• Niyogi, K. Björkman, O., Grossman, A.R. (1997) The role of specific xanthophylls in photoprotection. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 94:14162-14167.
• Kehoe, D., Grossman, A.R. (1996) Sensor of chromatic adaptation is similar to phytochrome and ethylene receptor. Science 273:1409-1412.
• Davies, J., Yildiz F., Grossman, A.R. (1996) Sac1, a putative regulator that is critical of survival of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii during sulfur deprivation. EMBO J 15:2150-2159.
• Collier, J., Grossman, A.R. (1994) A small peptide elicites the degradation of phycobilisomes during nutrient-limited growth of cyanobacteria. EMBO J 13:1039-1047.
• Conley, P.B., Lemaux, P.G., Grossman, A.R. (1985) Cyanobacterial light-harvesting complex subunits are encoded in two red light-induced transcripts. Science 230: 550-553.
• Grossman, A.R., Bartlett, S.G., Chua, N.H. (1980) Energy-dependent uptake of cytoplasmically-synthesized polypeptides by chloroplasts. Nature 285: 625-628.