Somerville was co-founder and Executive Chairman of
Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. and a co-founder of Poetic Genetics,
LS9, Inc, and Redleaf Biologics.[4]
Somerville has contributed to societal debates on the value of
transgenic crops[5] and biofuels.
Together with
Elliot Meyerowitz, Somerville was awarded the
Balzan Prize in 2006 for his work developing the small mustard plant A. thaliana as a model.[6][1][7][8] His interest in this plant was partly stimulated by a review article[9] written by
George Rédei.[10][2][11]
Many trainees from Somerville's lab have started independent labs, including
Mark Estelle, Peter McCourt, George W. Haughn, John W. Schiefelbein, Christoph Benning, Clint Chapple, Wolf-Dieter Reiter, John Browse,
Sean Cutler,
Dominique Bergmann, Seung Y. Rhee, Staffan Persson, Wolfgang Lukowitz, and C. Stewart Gillmor.
Research highlights
Pioneered ‘biochemical genetics’ approach to problems in plant metabolism, including
photorespiration,[2] lipid metabolism, and
cellulose synthesis.
First map-based cloning of an A. thaliana gene[12]
Estelle, M. A.; Somerville, Chris R. (1986). "The mutants of Arabidopsis". Trends in Genetics. 2: 89–93.
doi:
10.1016/0168-9525(86)90190-3.
Somerville, Chris; Koornneef, Maarten (2002). "A fortunate choice: the history of Arabidopsis as a model plant". Nature Reviews Genetics. 3 (11): 883–889.
doi:
10.1038/nrg927.
PMID12415318.
S2CID37515057.
Youngs, Heather; Somerville, Chris (2017-06-01). "Implementing industrial–academic partnerships to advance bioenergy research: the Energy Biosciences Institute". Current Opinion in Biotechnology. 45: 184–190.
doi:
10.1016/j.copbio.2017.03.027.
PMID28458111.