Mark Wheelis

{{Short description|American biologist and professor in Biological Sciences}}

Mark L. Wheelis is an American microbiologist. Wheelis is currently a professor in the College of Biological Sciences, University of California, Davis.{{cite web|url=http://biosci3.ucdavis.edu/FacultyAndResearch/FacultyProfile.aspx?FacultyID=260|title=Mark L. Wheelis|date=2011|publisher=University of California, Davis|accessdate=3 September 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140413132255/http://biosci3.ucdavis.edu/FacultyAndResearch/FacultyProfile.aspx?FacultyID=260|archive-date=13 April 2014|url-status=dead}} Carl Woese and Otto Kandler with Wheelis wrote the important paper Towards a natural system of organisms: proposal for the domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eucarya that proposed a change from the Two-empire system of Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes to the Three-domain system of the domains Eukaryota, Bacteria and Archaea.{{cite web|url=http://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/randau/research.html|title=Prokaryotic Small RNA Biology|last=Randau|first=Lennart|date=18 October 2010|work=Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg|publisher=Max Planck Society|accessdate=3 September 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130902181725/http://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/randau/research.html|archive-date=2 September 2013|url-status=dead}}

Wheelis's research interests include the history of biological warfare. He co-authored (with Larry Gonick) The Cartoon Guide to Genetics (1983). Wheelis provided the scientific knowledge and text, while Gonick contributed the illustrations and humor.Larry Gonick & Mark Wheelis, The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, Longman Higher Education, 1983, 216 pp. {{ISBN|978-0064604161}}.