Freeling, Michael

American geneticist

Michael Freeling is an American geneticist and plant biologist. He is currently a professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California. He is known for early work on maize anaerobic metabolism, developmental genetics of the maize ligule, proposing the grasses as a single genetic system model with Jeffrey Bennetzen, and the discovery of biased gene retention following whole genome duplications in plants. In 1994 Freeling was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2017 he was awarded the McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies.