By Arliss Ryan*, 41°Nonline

When the Space Age dawned in the 1950s, people sat riveted in front of their TVs, watching awe-inspiring liftoffs of the first Mercury rockets. When the Information Age exploded in the 1970s, the rush to own a personal computer was on. Now we’re in a new age, the era of biotechnology, but so far the public hasn’t caught on with the same fervor. Albert Kausch, University of Rhode Island (URI) molecular biology visiting professor and vice president and director of research at HybriGene, Inc., an agricultural biotechnology firm in West Kingston, R.I., is out to change that.

"The technologies that developed in the Space and Information ages brought us new tools and products that have forever altered the way we live," says Kausch. "But the ramifications of biotechnology will go much deeper. Once people understand biotechnology, it will fundamentally change the way we view ourselves as human beings and the way we think about life on Earth."

Kausch’s own background in biotechnology includes working with the team that developed the world’s first genetically modified corn plants in the 1990s. He is an inventor or coinventor on over 20 U.S. and worldwide patents in molecular and agricultural biotechnology. His current research at HybriGene focuses on molecular improvement and gene discovery in grasses and cereal crops. But Kausch understands that for the general public, and particularly for those of a nonscientific bent, it can take some real contortions to wrap one’s brain around what can be a highly complex subject. That’s why, working with URI, he is developing courses that will gently introduce people to the exhilarating world of biotechnology.

The most basic course, titled "Issues in Biotechnology," is offered as a URI undergraduate course with no prerequisites. Kausch developed the course with sponsorship from Pfizer and team-teaches it with Marta Gómez-Chiarri, URI fisheries, animal and veterinary science assistant professor. It seeks to answer the elementary questions that come to mind every time a news event like Dolly, the cloned sheep, or recent claims of human cloning grab the headlines. Exactly how does DNA work? What is a genome? How are genes cloned? The course also debates ethical issues. Should the federal government support stem cell research? What are the dangers of biotechnology to the environment? Educational materials are also available to middle schools, high schools, and the general public through a nonprofit organization called Lifeedu (pronounced Life e-d-u) established by Kausch and his colleagues.

"There is a wide disparity between what the general public knows and understands about biotechnology and the actual science," says Kausch. "This leads to a lot of uninformed debate about issues such as genetically engineered food. For example, many people don’t even realize that plants have genes, so when I point out to them that humans have 31,000-plus genes and a rice plant has approximately 44,000 genes, they’re astounded."

URI undergraduates can also take a two-semester laboratory-lecture course titled "Modern Techniques in Genetic Engineering" in which each student is given their own turfgrass or rice gene. The student introduces the gene into an embryogenic cell that is then capable of growing back into a whole turfgrass or rice plant. Each introduced gene is unique and would confer on the new plant a specific characteristic; for example, resistance to an herbicide. This laboratory experience provides the students with hands-on training in all the techniques currently used in the agricultural biotechnology industry and an impressive entry on their future resumes. In addition, the students are required to submit an abstract on their work to the American Society for Plant Biology. Kausch describes the course as "a gene machine with a student engine." An internship program between URI and HybriGene enables selected students to continue their research for publication.

The collaboration between URI and HybriGene underscores the mutual benefits of biotechnology companies large and small relocating to Rhode Island. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Oregon with several hundred employees, HybriGene focuses on the development of new products for the turfgrass seed industry and hybrid cereal crop plants through genetic modification. Kausch says, "We have a great team of plant biologists, including Hong Luo, a very talented molecular biologist." Their main company laboratory is now located in West Kingston with six full-time employees and up to 15 interns. The lab seeks to produce new varieties of grasses and cereals with commercial potential. For Kausch, the interface between URI and HybriGene is the perfect opportunity to blend his dual passions of research and teaching.

"I liked the atmosphere at URI and saw a lot of potential for collaboration," says Kausch. "Right now, we’re doing groundbreaking work on transgenic organisms (organisms that contain a transferred gene from another organism), and we have a whole greenhouse of transgenic grass and rice."

Turfgrasses are grown on over 40 million acres in the United States and comprise a $30 billion industry, but unfortunately, the environmental impact of grasses from pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, and water usage is approximately 18 times that of agricultural lands. The average home lawn uses 10,000 gallons of water per summer. So HybriGene is introducing traits into grasses that will lessen environmental impact and inputs. Part of that program is devoted to containing the introduced traits to prevent their transfer to other grasses. HybriGene has just announced that it has produced herbicide-tolerant bentgrasses that are also male-sterile to prevent transgene flow to the environment. Transgenic grasses can be created with specific environmentally responsible characteristics, such as disease or drought resistance, to meet specific applications or environments, such as a golf course, stadium, cemetery, or public park, or to thrive in a particular climate from New England to New Mexico. Rhode Island has long been known for its turfgrass industry, so advances in this field will be of particular benefit to the state.

HybriGene’s other major research focus is rice. Why rice? Because, says Kausch simply, "it feeds the world." To explain the potential of genetically engineered rice, Kausch turns first to corn. Hybrid corn was first developed in Connecticut in 1903 by traditional crossbreeding methods and became available commercially in 1938. The advantage of creating a hybrid is increased plant vigor, a phenomenon first discovered by Darwin, that results in bigger, stronger, healthier plants. The development of hybrid corn is responsible for a four-fold increase in corn production in the United States and is the mainstay of corn agriculture. If, says Kausch, you can adapt this phenomenon of hybrid vigor from corn to rice, theoretically you could quadruple the yield. The impact for feeding the world’s hungry is enormous.

The problem, however, is that rice is far less easy to crossbreed than corn. Unlike corn, which pollinates from the tassel atop the stalk (male) to the silk on the ear (female), the rice plant produces what is known as a "perfect" flower, meaning that both the male and female components are contained in the same flower. Each rice plant can therefore fertilize itself. If you could make a rice plant that was male sterile, says Kausch, you could then use a different male donor. By repeating the process, you could develop plants with specific, desired characteristics, then cross them to achieve hybrid vigor. Biotechnology’s role in this endeavor is to provide researchers with a molecular method for reaching this goal instead of using traditional hand crossbreeding methods.

Kausch and Luo’s research on rice has been under way for almost three years and has just reached the exciting stage of analyzing the first transgenics. The first step is to create male sterility in rice that can be "restored" for hybrid seed production. The team hopes to have the basis for the world’s first hybrid rice created right here in Rhode Island this year. Intellectual property rights and patents will cover all the research and eventual products.

"What most people don’t realize is that virtually all the plants we now have in the grocery store were ‘invented’ by human beings less than 10,000 years ago," says Kausch. "What I mean by ‘invented’ is that these crops wouldn’t have come into existence without human intervention. Corn was invented about 9,000 to 7,000 years ago in Mesoamerica, wheat was invented in the Fertile Crescent, rice was invented in Africa and China. Biotechnology is just the next step in the evolution of agriculture."

As Kausch eagerly looks forward to the next stage in his laboratory work, he continues to push for more public education about biotechnology. He feels that a working knowledge of DNA, genetics, and biotechnology has become as necessary to a basic education as an understanding of the solar system and computer literacy.

"This technology is a great step forward for agriculture," says Kausch. "It’s amazing what can be done now. 

Arliss Ryan is a Freelance Writer who worked with the URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences to develop this article.