David Lloyd (botanist)

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For other persons named David Lloyd, see David Lloyd (disambiguation).

David Lloyd (c. 1938 - 30 May 2006) was a New Zealand molecular biologist and the seventh New Zealander to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in London. He did pioneering work on the theory of plant reproduction.

In December of 1992, Lloyd fell victim to poisoning by acrylamide, a common laboratory chemical. As a result, he laid in a coma for three months and he was left blind, mute, and quadriplegic. His former lover and fellow molecular biologist Vicki Calder was tried twice for his attempted murder. The first trial ended with a hung jury and the second acquitted her.

[edit] Research

Lloyd's major contribution to botany was in the field of plant reproduction. He discovered that plants should be treated differently genetically than mammals owing to their genome structure. Whereas mammals have male and female genomes (X and Y chromosomes), Plants have both male and female components to their genome.

Lloyd's theory was that a given plant could be considered to be a certain percentage male and a certain percentage female, with the exact proportion differing among individual plants.