Raymond L. Rodriguez

Raymond L. Rodriguez (born 1947) is an American professor of biology, specializing in molecular biology, genomics and biotechnology. His current research interests include diet-genome interactions, plant-made pharmaceuticals and the food/brain axis. Rodriguez is also an inventor, and entrepreneur. His research at the University of California, San Francisco in the 1970s helped lay the foundation for the biotechnology industry. He also holds several issued US patents. He is involved in programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion for women and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Early life and education The son of migrant farm workers, Rodriguez was born in 1947 in Fresno, California and raised in San Joaquin and Kerman, California. In 1965, he graduated from Kerman Union High School. After graduating from Fresno City College, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from California State University, Fresno in 1969 and in the following year he entered the PhD program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Under the supervision of professor Cedric Davern, Rodriguez produced visual autoradiographic evidence for bidirectional replication of the E. coli chromosome. While a UC Santa Cruz graduate student, Rodriguez received a research fellowship from the Ford Foundation in 1973. Post-doctoral research After receiving his PhD in 1974, Rodriguez was awarded an A.P. Giannini postdoctoral fellowship to work with professor Herbert W. Boyer in the department of microbiology at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. In Boyer's laboratory, Rodriguez collaborated with postdoctoral fellow, Francisco Bolivar Zapata (Paco), to construct more efficient and better characterized cloning vectors. Together, they constructed the 4,361 base pair, circular, autonomously replicating, DNA molecule, pBR322, the first general purpose molecular cloning vector approved by the National Institute of Health Guidelines. The abbreviation, “pBR322,” refers to the plasmid “p,” constructed by Bolivar and Rodriguez “BR,” and the last of “322” transformed colonies to be screened for the pBR322 plasmid. The 1977 publication describing the construction of pBR322 has been cited more than 6,000 times. Soon after its approval by the NIH, pBR322 was used to clone and express the first chemically synthesized gene for the human peptide hormone, somatostatin.