Norman and Doris Giles Professor Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Ph.D. (1980) University of Washington Elected Member, US National Academy of Sciences, 2004 Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2005 Fulbright Awards, 2008 and 1990 Guggenheim Fellow, 2008 1000 Talents Award, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2012 Lamarr Dodd Creative Research Award, 2014 Distinguished Visiting Researcher Award, CSIRO, Australia, 2017 Elected Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, 2020 Stebbins Medal (shared), 2021 Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB), 2025 Grant Support - "Systems Analysis of the Beneficial Associations of Sorghum with Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Studied with Genetics, Genomics, Imaging and Microbiomics," DOE "Consolidated Bioprocessing Initiative," DOE Research Interests - My lab is interested in plant genome structure and evolution, especially the nature of rearrangements and the contributions of transposable elements. We also study the relationship between genome structure, evolution and gene function. Our most active current research involves studies of microbe-microbe interactions in plant roots and surrounding soil. We have long-standing interests in genetic diversity and its use in under-utilized crops of the developing world, and biomass improvement for production of biofuels. Research Research Areas: Biotechnology Genomics and Bioinformatics Molecular Genetics Selected Publications Selected Publications: Bennetzen, J. L., J. Fernandez-Canela, V. Elmgreen, S. R. McCann, M. E. Norris, X. Deng and P. Brailey-Crane (2025) Microbial Partner (MiPner) Analysis. Frontiers in Microbiomes (doi: 10.3389/frmbi.2024.1500798). Kabir, A. H., P. Brailey-Crane, M. Abdelrahman, J. Legeay, B. Ahmed, L.-S. Phan Tran and J. L. Bennetzen. (2025) Ferritin-mediated iron homeostasis and bacterial shifts are associated with drought adaptation in sorghum. Physiol. Plant. 177:e70388 (doi:10.1111/ppl.70388). Bahri, B. A., P. Tian, L. Nissen, S. Rijal, K. M. Devos, J. L. Bennetzen and S. M. Smith (2025) Virulence and genetic diversity of Puccinia spp, causal agent of rust on switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) in the U.S. Pathogens 14, 194. (doi:10.3390/pathogens14020194). Grass Phylogeny Working Group III (72 authors, including J. L. Bennetzen) (2025) A nuclear phylogenomic tree of grasses (Poaceae) recovers current classification despite gene tree incongruence. New Phytol. 245:818-834 (doi:10.1111/nph.20263). Brailey-Crane, P. A., T. H. Pendergast IV, B. J. Long, A. K. Brinkley, S. R. Mondibrown, S. Spann, N. C. Johnson, K. M. Devos and J. L. Bennetzen (2025) Assessing the temporal dynamics of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities colonizing Sorghum bicolor across sites of contrasting land use history and climate. bioRxiv(10.1101/2025.10.07.681064). Long, B., S. Harding, K. Mozaffari and J. L. Bennetzen (2025) Leaf stage and roasting shape methylxanthine levels, chlorogenic acid amounts and overall metabolic profiles of Ilex vomitoria leaf extracts. bioRxiv 10.1101/2025.09.29.679294. Kabir, A. and J. L. Bennetzen (2024) Molecular insights into the mutualism that induces iron deficiency tolerance in sorghum inoculated with Trichoderma harzianum. Microbiological Res. 281:127630. Ali, R., S. R. Chaluvadi, X. Wang, K. Hazzouri, N. Sudalaimuthuasari, M. Rafi, M. Al-Nuaimi, S. Sasi, E. Antepenko, J. L. Bennetzen and K. Amiri (2024) Microbiome properties in the root nodules of Prosopis cineraria, a leguminous desert tree. Microbiol. Spectrum 12: e03617-23. Garg. V., A. Bohra, M. Mascher, M. Spannagl, X. Xu, M. Bevan, J. L. Bennetzen, and R. K. Varshney (2024) Unlocking the green code with Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) genome assemblies. Nature Genetics (doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-01830-7). Ma, P.-F., Y.-L. Liu, C. Guo, G. Jin, Z.-H. Guo, L. Mao, Y.-Z. Yang, L.-Z. Niu, Y.-J. Wang, L. G. Clark, E. A. Kellogg, Z.-C. Xu, X.-Y. Ye, J.-X. Liu, M.-Y. Zhuo, Y. Luo, Y. Yang, D. E. Soltis, J. L. Bennetzen, P. S. Soltis, and D.-Z. Li (2024) Polyploid origins, diversification and remarkable subgenome dominance in the world’s largest grasses. Genome assemblies of 11 bamboo species highlight diversification induced by dynamic subgenome dominance. Nature Genetics 56:710-724. Grass Phylogeny Working Group 3 (72 authors, including J. L. Bennetzen) (2024) Nuclear phylogenomics of grasses (Poaceae) supports current classification and reveals repeated reticulation. bioRxiv (2024.05. 28.596153). Bennetzen, J. L., J. Fernandez-Canela, V. Elmgreen, S. R. McCann, M. E. Norris, X. Deng and P. Brailey-Jones (2024) Microbial Partner (MiPner) Analysis. bioRxiv, 2024.11.08.622289. Kabir, A. H., P. Brailey-Jones, M. Abdelrahman, S. P. L. Tran and J. L. Bennetzen (2024) Iron-induced transcriptional and microbiome changes in host roots associated with drought tolerance in sorghum. bioRxiv, 10.1101/2024.07.19.604343.
