Scientific Discovery and the Fight to End Global Hunger

Marc Van Montagu, Mary–Dell Chilton and Robert T. Fraley

Monday, 14 Oct 2013 at 8:00 pm – Great Hall, Memorial Union

From laboratory research to in-field applications, the innovations of Marc Van Montagu, Mary-Dell Chilton and Robert T. Fraley are helping farmers around the world improve crop yields and feed a growing global population in an increasingly volatile climate. Van Montagu, Chilton and Fraley are joint recipients of the 2013 World Food Prize for their research and achievements in agricultural biotechnology. Working in separate facilities on two continents, they were pioneers in molecular biology and the science of genetically engineering plants. Their work has made it possible to develop crops that are resistant to insects and disease, tolerate extreme variations in climate, require less chemical fertilizer and help ensure an agricultural livelihood for some of the world's poorest farmers. Norman E. Borlaug Lecture

A reception and student poster display will precede the lecture from 7 to 8 p.m. in the South Ballroom, Memorial Union. Posters will address world food issues and are submitted by undergraduate and graduate students.

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The poster competition is funded by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Human Sciences, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Marc Van Montagu
Marc Van Montagu became intrigued with the new science of molecular biology as a student at Ghent University in his native Belgium. After earning his PhD, he accepted a permanent position with the Cell Biology Department at Ghent University Medical School, where he focused his research on RNA. In the late 1960s, Van Montagu and fellow researcher Jeff Schell started working with the plant disease known as crown gall. They were the first to discover that Agrobacterium tumefaciens, the plant tumor-inducing soil microbe, carries a rather large circular molecule of DNA, which they named "Ti plasmid." Van Montagu and Schell’s elucidation of the structure and function of Ti plasmid led to their development of the first technology to stably transfer foreign genes into plants. The discovery set up a race within the emerging molecular biology community to develop workable plant gene tools that could genetically engineer an array of plants and enhance crop production worldwide.

Van Montagu went on to found two biotechnology companies: Plant Genetic Systems, best known for its early work on insect-resistant and herbicide tolerant crops; and Crop Design, a company focused on the genetic engineering of agronomic traits for the global commercial corn and rice seed markets. In 2000, he also founded the Institute of Plant Biotechnology Outreach with the mission to assist developing countries in gaining access to the latest plant biotechnology developments and to stimulate their research institutions to become independent and competitive.

Mary-Dell Chilton
Mary-Dell Chilton's was fascinated by the Double Helix structure of DNA and after completing her PhD in chemistry at the University of Illinois she accepted a postdoctoral position in microbiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was there that she learned DNA hybridization technology, which she applied in her study of how Agrobacterium causes plant cells to grow into a gall. Chilton and her colleagues at the University of Washington made the breakthrough discovery that the crown gall tumors of plants are caused by the transfer of only a small piece of DNA from the Ti plasmid (T-DNA) in Agrobacterium tumefaciens into the host plant, where it becomes part of the plant’s genome.

Chilton continued her molecular biology research at Washington University in St. Louis, accepting a faculty position there in 1979. Three years later, her team produced the first transgenic tobacco plant. Her work demonstrated that T-DNA can be used to transfer genes from other organisms into higher plants, providing evidence that plant genomes could be manipulated in a much more precise fashion than was possible using traditional plant breeding.

Chilton joined Ciba-Geigy Corporation (later Syngenta Biotechnology) at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina in 1983 and began the next phase of her career, spanning both biotechnology research and administrative roles. She established one of the world’s first industrial agricultural biotechnology programs, leading applied research in areas such as disease and insect resistance, as well as continuing to improve transformation systems in crop plants. She has spent the last three decades overseeing the implementation of the new technology she developed and further improving it to be used in the introduction of new and novel genes into plants.

Robert Fraley
Robert Fraley is currently the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto and led the successful introduction of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" crops in the mid 1990s. The genetically engineered soybeans were resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, commercially known as Roundup. When Roundup Ready seeds were planted, a farmer was able to spray an entire field with glyphosate, and only the weeds would be eliminated, leaving the crop plants alive and thriving.

Fraley did his undergraduate education and graduate training in microbiology and biochemistry at the University of Illinois, followed by a post-doctoral research in biophysics at the University of California-San Francisco. He joined Monsanto as a research specialist in 1981 and led a plant molecular biology group that worked on developing better crops through genetic engineering. Building upon the discoveries of Mary-Dell Chilton and Marc Van Montagu, Fraley and his team produced the first transgenic plants using the Agrobacterium transformation process. They isolated a bacterial marker gene and engineered it to express in plant cells. By inserting that gene into Agrobacterium, they were able to transfer an immunity trait into petunia and tobacco cells.

Fraley grew up on a small Midwestern farm and could see the potential that this emerging science offered to farmers across many countries, many crops, and farms of all sizes. He often went out into fields to observe local agronomic practices and talk with farmers to ensure that they would be offered solutions that worked better than any alternatives. He has also championed making biotechnology accessible to small-holder farmers.

Cosponsored By:

• College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
• College of Human Sciences
• College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
• Nutritional Sciences Council
• Office of the President
• Plant Sciences Institute
• World Affairs
• World Food Prize Foundation
• Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)