Paul Atkins (left) and Jon Cody (right) pose among corn stalks in a University of Minnesota greenhouse.
Paul Atkins and Jon Cody move quickly. At their offices in the Cargill Building on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus, they were animated, riffing off of each other and jumping ahead to the future plans of their nascent company, Vireo Ag. Like a proud parent, Atkins still measures the life of Vireo Ag in months: 18 and counting. The company has taken its first steps, but Atkins and Cody hope to nurture Vireo Ag into something that can change the agriculture industry.
As a graduate student, Atkins learned from one of the world’s foremost experts on plant genomics — Dan Voytas, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Precision Plant Genomics and professor of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development. Together, Atkins, Voytas and other lab members, including Cody, who arrived as a postdoctoral assistant, worked on ways to fast-track the gene editing of crops.
“It’s deeply rewarding to see former mentees take discoveries from the lab and build a company around them,” Voytas said. “I’m proud of Paul and Jon and other members of the company, and it’s exciting to see how much they’ve accomplished in such a short time.”
As Atkins explained it, the revolution promised by genetically modified plants has been slow to arrive. Genetic engineering technologies, like CRISPR, promised a future of virus-proof soybeans, corn with stronger roots, and tomatoes fortified with extra vitamins. But it turns out that current methods to edit genomes in a petri dish are many steps removed from growing a genetically engineered crop in the field. The cell culture needs to be coaxed into something that grows roots and leaves — a plant, in other words — and then needs multiple generations of breeding to fully manifest the genetic changes.
Atkins and Cody have learned how to skip a few steps. Using proprietary methods developed at the Voytas lab as well as at the lab of Feng Zhang, associate professor of Plant and Microbial Biology, they can now splice genetic modifications directly onto a host plant. The process is so much faster and more efficient that they can work with so-called “elite strains”, the high-yield varieties that end up on grocery store shelves but that most researchers do not have the time or funding to focus on.
The promise that Vireo Ag is pitching to investors as well as to potential clients is a crop modification turnaround on the order of 10 months, instead of the typical three to five years. Such a short timeline puts them on pace with the development of new elite strains, and able to keep up with pest resistance and the compounding challenges of a changing climate.
Atkins stressed that none of Vireo Ag’s work would be possible without support from the College of Biological Sciences.
“If you wanted to start up this exact company not at the University [of Minnesota], it would not be possible in the twin cities. There just wouldn’t be greenhouse space,” Atkins said.
Cody chimed in: “This is an ideal environment. The plant community here is fantastic. There’s a lot of resources, and a lot of people you can talk to.”
Among those people are Zhang and Voytas. Both CBS faculty serve as science advisors for Vireo Ag, dropping by for words of wisdom, problem solving, or a nod of approval at the “forest” of tomatoes Atkins and Cody are now rearing in a greenhouse on the St. Paul campus.
“Vireo Ag is commercializing UMN technology that makes plant gene editing simple and scalable. We are so excited to see UMN technology getting commercial traction and investor interest,” Zhang said.
Atkins and Cody know that the next 18 months of launching their business will bring unique challenges. But with faculty support and access to lab and greenhouse space, they have everything they need to grow. -Hugh Gabriel