Brian Fox, the Marvin J. Johnson Professor in Fermentation Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, tinkers with the way living things use chemistry to turn their own blueprints, DNA, into the processes that make a healthy organism go.

Over more than three decades, federal agencies including the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation have supported his efforts to study that basic biological chemistry — and to engineer changes to organisms that can benefit humanity.

Fox’s current research focuses on a genetic alteration to poplar trees, equipping them to produce an industrial chemical. It was a surprise discovery that was years in the making and only made possible by long-term investment in his line of research.

“I had no idea we were going to find a gene that would do such a specific and useful thing,” he told UW–Madison’s Office of Strategic Communication in a recent interview. “But here we are, having turned basic research on some gene families into three patents and a process that makes an industrial chemical in a tree.”

Read the full interview with Brian Fox on the Department of Biochemistry website