Robert B. Mellor (born in Yorkshire, UK) is a British scientist probably best known for his 1989 "unified vacuole theory", although also made significant contributions to environmental technology and to our understanding of the workings of the tech entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Unified vacuole theory
The theory states that in plant endosymbioses, the micro-symbiont and the macro-symbiont generally share their lytic vacuolar compartments. This stems from Mellor's earlier 1988 symbiosome (or "symbiosome is a lysosome") theory, which states that the organelle that microsymbionts inhabit partially takes over the lysosomal functions in these plant cells. These plant cells are analogous to the role of protein bodies in seeds, in particular that the rhizobial symbiosome is an organ-specific form of lysosome or vacuole in legume root nodules.
The Marburg and Basel Years (plant biology) Mellor was interested in how plants distinguish between symbiotic and pathogenic infections. In 1984, he set about measuring defence responses including Phytoalexin and Chitinase in nodules infected with different rhizobial mutants. Gradually, he observed that in Rhizobia, the nod genes are responsible for producing different nod factors (lipo-chitin molecules). Among many other effects he also observed that they can provoke plant defence responses, so that it is essential that these genes be switched off after infection, or symbiosis could not take place. This model won general acclaim, and the paper with David Collinge was later reprinted (Mellor and Collinge, 1995) as that year’s number one most important publication in the area of Plant Sciences.
In other works, Mellor has claimed that in legumes the root nodule cytoplasm may be under water stress and the plant may combat this by using the bacterial/fungal (in the case of vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza) disaccharide sugar trehalose. The concept has been repeatedly confirmed, and this effect explains why nodulated plants have a higher drought tolerance than non-nodulated plants.
The Göttingen Years (environmental nanotech) Mellor was also interested in applied science, and after leaving the University of Basel he became director of research and development at a German chemical company. There he led the group that invented and patented a system to power immobilized oxido-reductase enzymes and artificial co-factors using electrical power from a domestic socket. Twenty-five years later, the authors Eltarahony et al. stated in their round-up review paper that "... Mellor et al. [1992] pioneered the concept of current promotion, electrode bioreactor and denitrification control, this concept, [is now] widely used to treat different types of wastewater, such as toxic and refractory organic wastewater as well as wastewater containing heavy metal ions" helping to provide clean water for millions of people globally.
The London Years (computing and maths) In early 2000, Mellor joined and helped start-up IT the University of Copenhagen, alongside Mads Tofte and others. In 2005 he became Director of Enterprise at Kingston University, London, (and quadrupling enterprise income) in Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics while teaching the mathematical modelling of business processes and knowledge management at MSc level. Mellor, influenced by Stiglitz, realized that econometric methods can be used to quantify the value of knowledge management. His breakthrough computer modelling resulted in a complete explanation of the developmental lifecycle of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), firstly in his 2011 book and then later expanded upon in his 2018 publication, "Big Data Modelling the Knowledge Economy".
He runs a Masters programme around IT Consultancy, as well as a select "Big Data" research group engaged with modelling organizations, especially Science Parks, in the context of regional development.
Most recently, working together with Matthias Georg Will, an econometric computer model was developed which explains why, in modern business environments, flat organizations can only exist if employees are able to competently evaluate incoming innovations and their judgement is accepted by their managers, a situation typified by the successful tech firms.