Photo of Noah Whiteman holding a copy of his book MOST DELICIOUS POISON -- The Story of Nature's Toxins -- from Spices to Vices

Research Expertise and Interest

adaptation, evolutionary biology, genomics, genetics, toxicology, insect biology, plant biology, microbiology, CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing

Research Description

Noah Whiteman is Professor of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution and Development and Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology at UC-Berkeley. He also has affiliations with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, Center for Computational Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and University and Jepson Herbaria. His laboratory focuses on understanding how and why plants, microbes, and even some animals use toxins in offense and defense, and how some organisms overcome and even steal those toxins, from the monarch butterfly, to us. He is also interested in understanding how biological toxins can be leveraged to prevent and treat human disease. He teaches the introductory Evolution course (IB C160 and MCB C144) at Cal, a class of around 160 undergraduate and graduate students. Whiteman is co-Director of a large predoctoral training grant from the NIH called "Genetics Dissection of Cells and Organisms" that provides training to 14 Ph.D. students in genetics from three departments.

Whiteman conducted his dissertation research in the Galapagos Islands on co-evolution between birds and their parasites. He then completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard where he began to use plants as model hosts that were attacked by diverse parasites. At UC Berkeley, his laboratory has focused on how plants have evolved to produce diverse toxins as defensive shields and how insects have evolved in response to resist and even sequester them. He uses genomics and genome editing as a tool to ascertain which genetic changes are responsible for these co-evolved traits.  Often, his laboratory relies on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and its relatives (e.g., Scaptomyza flava) as models on the animal side. They are also interested in the plant side of the equation and also use the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and other mustards as hosts of the insects. A new project focuses on the role of toxin genes captured by bacteria have been integrated into the fruit fly's innate immune system to protect it from wasps. A smaller project focuses on interactions between hummingbirds and their nectar plants at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado.

See their latest research on how they used CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to understand how diverse insects overcome terpenoid toxins in plants as each lineage co-evolved across the last 400 million years, how insects borrowed bacterial toxin genes to resist parasitoid wasps, and now the monarch butterfly evolved to be resistant to milkweed toxins it stores in its body:

Over half of all of our modern medicines are natural products. The healing plants, fungi, and even some animals from which pure drugs have been isolated were often first discovered by Indigenous peoples. The powers of these materials are communicated across the generations through oral tradition and materia medica. Curare, the first muscle relaxant used in general surgery, and cocaine, the first local anesthetic, were first discovered and used by Indigenous peoples. Wonder drugs, from aspirin (anti-inflammatory) to cephalosporins (antibiotics), and morphine (analgesic) to taxol (anti-cancer) evolved not for our benefit at all, but to protect plants and microbes from enemies as chemical defenses.

Through a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, he has written a book to be published on October 24, 2023 on the origin of nature's toxins, how animals and humans overcome them, and how they have changed the world: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/noah-whiteman/most-delicious-poison/9780316386579/. His book provides a new lens through which to view both natural and human history as well as the biology of addiction.

Goals/Interests as an educator: To teach and mentor creative, kind, passionate, and skeptical scientists. He has a deep interest in engagement with students, and the public, on evolutionary biology and science as a way of knowing. He often shares his failures and successes as a gay, first-generation college student who grew up in rural, northeastern Minnesota.

See his lab website: www.noahwhiteman.org for more details.

In the News

What It Takes to Eat a Poisonous Butterfly

In a study appearing this week in the journal Current Biology, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC Riverside report monarch-like genetic mutations in the genomes of four organisms that are known to eat monarchs: the black-headed grosbeak, a migratory bird that snacks on the butterflies at their overwintering home in Mexico; the eastern deer mouse, a close relative of the Mexican black-eared deer mouse that feeds on butterflies that fall to the ground; a tiny wasp that parasitizes monarch eggs; and a nematode that parasitizes insect larvae that feed on milkweed.

CRISPRed flies mimic monarch butterfly — and could make you vomit

The fruit flies in Noah Whiteman’s lab may be hazardous to your health. Whiteman and his University of California, Berkeley, colleagues have turned perfectly palatable fruit flies — palatable, at least, to frogs and birds — into potentially poisonous prey that may cause anything that eats them to puke. In large enough quantities, the flies likely would make a human puke, too, much like the emetic effect of ipecac syrup.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
November 29, 2023

The Evolutionary Origins of Psychedelics

Time
Noah Whiteman

"Many baroque chemicals we use and abuse appeared on the planet because they enhance the survival odds of the organisms that make them or absorb them through their diet or microbiome," writes Noah Whiteman, integrative biology professor. 

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October 3, 2019

Image of the Day: Poison Tolerance

The Scientist
Emily Makowski
The Scientist's 'Image of the Day' pictures a fruit fly walking on a Monarch Butterfly's wing to represent a landmark study conducted at Berkeley. The researchers, led by associate integrative biology professor Noah Whiteman, used CRISPR gene-editing technology to re-create evolutionary mutations that could help a creature adapt to the environment. They accomplished this by engineering fruit flies that can safely consume toxic milkweed and protect it from predation by making it toxic to would-be predators, just as the Monarch butterfly evolved. "All we did was change three sites, and we made these superflies," Professor Whiteman says. "But to me, the most amazing thing is that we were able to test evolutionary hypotheses in a way that has never been possible outside of cell lines." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Stories on this topic have appeared in dozens of sources, including Scientific American.
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October 2, 2019

Mutant flies dine like kings

Washington Post
Ben Guarino
In a landmark use of CRISPR gene-editing technology to re-create evolutionary mutations that could help a creature adapt to the environment, a team of researchers led by associate integrative biology professor Noah Whiteman has engineered fruit flies that can safely consume toxic milkweed and protect it from predation by making it toxic to would-be predators, just as the Monarch butterfly evolved. "All we did was change three sites, and we made these superflies," Professor Whiteman says. "But to me, the most amazing thing is that we were able to test evolutionary hypotheses in a way that has never been possible outside of cell lines. ... It would have been difficult to discover this without having the ability to create mutations with CRISPR." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Other stories on this topic have appeared in the New York Times, Science, and Daily Mail Online.
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