Ignacio Chapela is Associate Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has applied his training as an ecologist and a mycologist to the study of symbioses in forest ecosystems in temperate and tropical environments, the natural history of secondary metabolites and natural products, and the role of microbes in large-scale cycling.

He has pursued this research while accompanying the emergence of biology through the turn of the Century as a dominant force in economic, political and cultural terms. Working in very diverse institutional settings from the local, indigenous community-, through industrial-, national-, trans-national and multilateral scales in various countries, he has provided critical insight into questions of governance and sovereignty over genetic resources, the dynamics of genetic contamination and the ecology of gene-flow into wild and domesticated populations.

His involvement with a coalition of indigenous communities in Southern Mexico led to the first discovery and description of unintended large-scale movement of transgenic materials, which opened the evidence-based discussion over control and reliability of biotech interventions in the environment.

He has been a member of many advisory and policy-making bodies, such as the US National Academy of Sciences’ committee on the environmental impact of the release of transgenic crops.

His current work focuses on enabling field-based detection, monitoring and mapping of microbial materials, including those resulting from genetic engineering, through the use of distributive, decentralized strategies. This has led to the development of novel methods, strategies and instrumentation for decentralized use in remote field situations, under direct control of local communities.

Selected publications

Miluse, T., Lohn, A., Binimelis, R., Chapela, I.H., Oehen, B., Zemp, N., Widmer, A. and Hilbeck, A. (2017). Teosinte in Europe – Searching for the Origin of a Novel Weed. Scientific Reports, 7, 1560.

Chapela, I.H. and Garbelotto, M. 2004. Phylogeography and evolution in matsutake and close allies inferred by analyses of ITS sequences and AFLPs. Mycologia, 96(4), 2004, pp. 730-741.

Quist, D. & Chapela, I.H. (2001). Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico. Nature, 414, 541-543.

Chapela, I.H., Osher, L.J., Horton, T.R. and Henn, M.R. (2000). Ectomycorrhizal fungi introduced with exotic plantations induce soil carbon depletion. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 33:1733-1740.