PULLMAN, Wash. — Washington State University botanist Vince Franceschi was recognized this month as one of the world’s most frequently cited researchers.
The Institute for Scientific Information announced the addition of 130 scientists from more than 14 countries to their “Highly-Cited Researcher” listing of researchers whose articles are the most often cited by other scientists. Franceschi’s name was added to the plant and animal sciences category.
The ISI citation list is derived from data collected from millions of articles over 40 years. According to ISI, “Citation is a key measure of influence in science and technology because it is a highly informed interaction. When one researcher refers to the work of another, they are, in essence, acknowledging the influence that work has had on their own.”
Franceschi, director of the WSU School of Biological Sciences, works on plant cell biology and physiology and is noted for his research on the relationship between structures in plants and their functions. He is a member of a team that solved part of the mystery of how plants are able to move large molecules from cells into adjacent phloem tubes through tiny channels, called plasmodesmata, in the phloem cell walls. This work was the cover story in the January 1999 issue of Science magazine.
He also contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown form of photosynthesis in plants. The resulting article was the cover story in the September 2002 issue of The Plant Journal, a leading journal in the plant sciences. That some plants carry out C4 photosynthesis in a single cell was previously thought impossible. Photosynthesis, the mechanism plants use to generate food from the energy in sunlight and carbon dioxide in air, is more efficient in C4 plants, which have special features that allow them to capture extra carbon dioxide. C4 photosynthesis had been thought to require two specialized cells sitting next to each other (a construction called Kranz anatomy) – one cell to collect the carbon dioxide and the other to condense and process it into plant material. The team discovered the rare, one-cell process in plants from central-Asian semi-deserts.
Also in 2002, Franceschi and colleagues published work that demonstrated for the first time how ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) is transported in plants; work that could lead to the development of methods to increase the amount of the vitamin in certain foods.
Franceschi is a member of the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Botanical Society of America. He has been a WSU faculty member since 1982.
Previously listed in the ISI plant and animal sciences group were WSU botanist Gerald Edwards and biochemist Clarence “Bud” Ryan, a fellow of the WSU Institute of Biological Chemistry.
