JAMES B. RUSSELL: CONTRIBUTIONS TO RUMINAL MICROBIOLOGY

摘要

James B. Russell (1951-2009) was born in California and moved with his family to New York in 1953. His parents purchased a dairy farm in 1954 and the family has operated it ever since. The farm meant everything to Jim and I was fortunate to visit thefarm on a visit to Cornell from South Africa in 1984. It was here that Jim gained his lifelong interest and passion for work with dairy cows. Initially Jim had planned to become a veterinarian but after taking a course in introductory microbiology he changed his major. After completing his BS degree at Cornell University, he completed MS and PhD degrees at the University of California, Davis. His PhD advisor and mentor Professor R. Lee Baldwin had a strong interest in metabolism both in the rumen and the host animal and he integrated this knowledge of ruminant digestion and metabolism using mathematical models. In fact, over the last few years of his life Jim continued with contributions to rumen modeling efforts. This background of graduate studies made Jim uniquely qualified to contribute to rumen models and make major contributions to the rumen sub-model of the Cornell Net Protein and Carbohydrate and Protein System. He interacted with Professor Robert E. Hungate in the Department of Bacteriology at Davis during the course of his PhD research and published a series of seminal papers on substrate preferences and affinities, maintenance energy requirements and effects of pH on growth rates and efficiency using chemostat approaches. This technique and approach made another strong and lasting contribution to his research portfolio. His first position was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois in 1978 where I first met Jim and established a lifelong relationship and respect for his research. He taught courses on intermediary metabolism in ruminant animais and microbiology of the gastrointestinal tract. These teaching themes continued at Cornell and he was consistently listed as an excellent and innovative teacher. He brought Mike Cotta from California with him as his first graduate student. At the time, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the laboratory of Professor Marvin. P. Bryant in the Department of Dairy Science. Also, at that time, theDepartment of Dairy Science had also recently hired Prof Robert B. Hespell to replace Mike Wolin. We were therefore in the fortunate but unusual position of having three top anaerobic microbiologists in one building together with a group of prominent microbiologists up campus in the Department of Microbiology namely Professors Ralph Wolfe, Carl Woese and Abigail Salyers. This was a glorious time and rumen microbiologists were in the vanguard with respect to new developments and concepts relating to anaerobic microbiology and especially rumen microbiology. In 1981, the USDA established a new position at Cornell University and Jim returned to his alma mater and worked as a rumen microbiologist initially in the Department of Animal Sciences and in 1991 he moved to the Department of Microbiology.