Michael Goodin

He developed several useful techniques for plant virological research. While at Jackson's laboratory, in collaboration with Ralf Dietzgen, Goodin invented an Agrobacterium-mediated protein expression vector, pGD, which could generate large amounts of expressed proteins in leaves infiltrated with Agrobacterium. Jackson describes this technique in 2021 as in "widespread use ... as a basic tool for plant biology studies" and also comments that it resulted in the highest-cited paper from his laboratory. He created tools for investigating interactions between viral and plant proteins at the molecular level that are used internationally. He helped to develop a minireplicon system for SYNV, which was the earliest successful one for a negative-stranded RNA virus of plants. He also helped to develop the tobacco-related plant, Nicotiana benthamiana, further as a model host for a wide range of plant viruses.

He died suddenly on December 12, 2020, in Lexington, Kentucky, at the age of 53. The Michael Goodin Global Aspirations Award was established in his honor at the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the University of Kentucky in January 2021.

In addition to his academic teaching, Goodin promoted the study of biology in local schools and taught Kenyan students online. He was awarded the Teacher Who Made a Difference Award in 2012. He was an advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement and received the American Society for Microbiology's Honorary Diversity Lecturer award in 2018, for his work promoting the study of microbiology to underrepresented minorities.

His first postdoctoral position was at the University of California, Berkeley (1996–2002), under the plant virologist Andrew O. Jackson. In 2002, Goodin moved to the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Kentucky, rising to full professor in 2017, as well as head of the Plant Science Biological Imaging Facility (from 2008).

Michael Maurice Goodin (April 8, 1967 – December 12, 2020) was a Jamaican-born plant virologist. He researched interactions between the virus and the host cell, focusing on rhabdoviruses that infect plants. He also studied emerging plant viruses, including economically significant viruses infecting coffee plants. He co-invented a widely used method of generating large amounts of expressed proteins in leaves infiltrated with Agrobacterium (with Ralf Dietzgen), and developed other techniques for plant molecular virology research. Goodin moved to the United States in around 1989 and was a professor at the University of Kentucky from 2017 until his death.

Goodin was born on April 8, 1967 in Jamaica. His mother, a librarian, was Canadian and the family moved to Hamilton, Ontario, in the early 1980s. After gaining his first degree in biology and chemistry at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario (1989), Goodin moved to the United States to attend Pennsylvania State University, where he obtained his MS (1992) and PhD (1995) degrees in plant pathology. His thesis (entitled "Characterization of two viruses associated with Agaricus bisporus") was on La France disease of mushrooms, which is caused by fungal viruses; his doctoral advisor was C. Peter Romaine.