PHILADELPHIA  University of Pennsylvania biologist Anthony R. Cashmore has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, one of 72 American scientists newly recognized for their distinguished re-search achievements.

Election to the NAS is considered one of the highest honors accorded U.S. scientists and engineers.  Including Cashmore, 38 Penn researchers are now NAS members.

Cashmore, professor of biology and director of Penns Plant Science Institute, studies the mechanisms by which plants respond to light.  Plants use several photoreceptors to detect the quality and quantity of light in the surrounding environment.

In studies of the plant species Arabidopsis thaliana, Cashmore has researched these photoreceptors and how they drive plant growth and development, including changes in pigmentation and gene expression, seed germination, stem elongation, circadian rhythms and flowering.  

In the 1990s Cashmores laboratory first characterized cryptochrome, a photoreceptor that senses blue and ultraviolet light.  Related receptors have since been found to play a role in circadian rhythms in animals, including humans.

Cashmore received a B.Sc. in 1962, an M.Sc. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1966, all from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.  He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge; the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; and at the University of California, Berkeley.  A faculty member at Rockefeller University in New York City before joining Penn in 1986, Cashmore has authored more than 100 refereed research papers and has served on the editorial boards of the publications Plant Molecular Biology and The Plant Journal.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the gen-eral welfare.  It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, which calls on NAS to act as an official ad-viser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.

NOTE: Cashmore is a resident of Penn Valley, Pa.