Barbara Baker is an American plant molecular geneticist working at the University of California, Berkeley and the United States Department of Agriculture, as part of the Plant Gene Expression Center in Albany, California. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Baker graduated from Los Alamitos High School in 1970 and completed her undergraduate studies at UC San Diego in 1974. She went on to earn her PhD at UC San Francisco with J. Michael Bishop and Harold E. Varmus in 1981, and did postdoctoral research in Germany. As of 2021, Baker is an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a senior scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture.
Baker is a plant geneticist working on plant innate immunity, the mechanism by which plants protect themself from diseases. Baker's research includes cloning the N gene for resistance to tobacco mosaic virus and analysis of its TIR domain; this was one of the first plant disease resistance genes (R genes) cloned. She is also known for her research on the roles of R genes in defense against plant pathogens. Baker has also examined the genetic conditions behind the susceptibility to disease in flowering plants in the genus Solanum, including potatoes and tomatoes.