University Of California and Ceres, Inc. Form Plant Genetics Partnership
DAVIS and LOS ANGELES, Calif. – April 20, 1999 – The University of California and Ceres, Inc., an agricultural biotechnology company, have formed a partnership to create a multi-campus "institute without walls." Ceres will provide $5.75 million to UC over five years to support plant molecular biology research at a newly created Seed Institute. The agreement also includes the creation of a Plant Genomics Technology Center at UCLA.
The partnership comes at a time when molecular and genetic techniques make it possible to identify and isolate every gene in plant chromosomes, and define its function.
"We're in a new era where genetic engineering opens the possibility to use plants as factories of novel chemicals -- and this will change the economics of agriculture," said Robert B. Goldberg, UCLA professor of cell, molecular and developmental biology, and co-director of the Seed Institute. "When people look back 1,000 years from now, they will say that this was the beginning of directing our biological destiny.
"We are already able to design plants containing better nutrients for human consumption, plants that are insect-resistant or that are resistant to environment-friendly herbicides. In the future we will be able to move genes from exotic plants or from other organisms into crop plants, engineer plants as factories for vaccines or pharmaceuticals, and increase a plant's photosynthetic efficiency. We may even be able to do away with fossil fuels and use plant derivatives as the source of fuel for cars. These changes will greatly benefit mankind and the environment.
"The Seed Institute will contribute to the discovery of the genes that will change our thinking about what plants can do for mankind. We will be able to answer such questions as which genes determine the architecture of a plant, and how they work," Goldberg added.
Under the agreement, Ceres will provide $4.75 million for research over five years, including sponsoring undergraduate research fellowships at UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz. Laboratories on these four UC campuses will be part of the Seed Institute, along with the University of Utah, which has a renowned plant genetics laboratory.
In addition, Ceres will provide $1 million to establish a Plant Genomics Technology Center at UCLA -- for the use of scientists and students from UC campuses -- with the most sophisticated technologies available, including state-of-the-art DNA sequencing machines, for plant genomics research.
Genomics is the ability to study the complete set of instructions for making an organism -- all of its genes -- rather than individual genes.
"The emerging field of plant genomics offers great promise to identify all of the genes necessary to program the entire life cycle of major crop plants, and to harvest these genes to make the 'super plants' of the 21st century," said Goldberg, whose research focuses on gene expression during plant development.
Faculty, researchers and students -- undergraduate and graduate -- will participate in the Seed Institute's research. The agreement can be extended beyond the initial five years, with Ceres providing $1.25 million for each additional year.
Mark Vaeck, vice president of operations at Ceres, a Thousand Oaks-based plant genomics company, said that Ceres entered into the partnership "to broaden our knowledge base in plant biology, especially our ability to identify and characterize genes that play an important role in regulating plant development.
"The University of California has leading expertise in seed development," Vaeck said. "Ceres intends to become the foremost independent provider of commercially important plant genes and traits to the seed, food, fiber, agrochemical and chemical industries. The UC research alliance is part of Ceres' overall R&D strategy and will help us reach our research goals."
Brian Copenhaver, provost of UCLA's College of Letters and Science, praised the alliance as "a novel model for a partnership" between industry and universities.
"This unique long-term commitment by an agricultural biotechnology company supports university research and teaching, and will make it possible for the University of California to provide the basic research that will be applied to generate the agricultural products of the next century," Copenhaver said.
"In addition to making a commitment to fund research on plant development in our laboratories, Ceres is providing us with valuable resources, technology and expertise," Copenhaver added. "For example, Ceres will allow UC scientists to use its 'gene machine,' which provides the means to elucidate the function of many thousands of specific DNA sequences in plants."
"Students will greatly benefit from this partnership," said Fred Eiserling, dean of life sciences at UCLA and co-director of the Seed Institute.
"Ceres will, for example, determine the DNA sequences of genes that contribute to seed formation -- information that we could not otherwise obtain -- which will be available for our basic research on seed development," Eiserling said. "Ceres will provide the technology necessary to test our researchers' theories and determine whether our scientists have discovered principles that are generally applicable to seeds. Undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students will be trained and will benefit greatly from this unique collaboration."
Plants have 25,000-50,000 genes, and very little is known about the vast majority of these genes, said Goldberg, who is also a co-founder of Ceres and a member of its board of directors. "We want to learn what the genetic control systems are; we want to learn about the building blocks," Goldberg said.
How soon will the agricultural revolution arrive?
"It's here already," he answered. "All the technology necessary to engineer a plant exists. Genetic engineering of plants is old stuff now. More than 30 percent of all crop plants in the U.S. are genetically engineered. Ten years from now, it will be close to 100 percent. We can now sequence a plant genome, and we can study the activity of thousands of genes at a time; genomics is changing the face of agriculture.
"Although I cannot predict what kind of products will result from genomics discoveries, I can assure you we'll find something significant."
Ceres was founded in 1997 after Goldberg encouraged Walter De Logi, now Ceres' CEO, to finance a university plant genomics institute. As they discussed the promise of plant genomics, Goldberg recalled, De Logi asked him, "Do you want to start a company?"
"I thought, let's start a company and an institute," Goldberg said. The institute would do basic research and teach students, he added, while the company would provide funding for the discovery research and conduct more applied research.
Ceres opened its first laboratory in June of 1997 on campus space that it leased from UCLA. Since then, the company has raised about $55 million, hired 70 employees and moved to new facilities in Thousand Oaks.
"The idea was to create a new way of doing science at a university," said Goldberg, whose research achievements include the genetic engineering of a hybridization system that works universally in major crop plants. "The professors, students and postdoctoral scholars would work collaboratively on one important issue, such as how to make a seed, and undergraduates would participate in state-of-the-art genetics research as part of the research team. As a rule, in the field of life sciences research, academic investigators work on separate projects in separate labs. However, to tackle major scientific problems, a critical mass of technology and brainpower is required. I was worried that the most exciting plant research would be transferred to industry. I thought I had about a one-in-a-trillion chance of pulling it off -- but here we are!"
A number of mechanisms have been established to avoid conflicts of interest, including the creation of a university oversight committee to evaluate research decisions.
Among the scientists who will participate in the Seed Institute, in addition to Goldberg, are Robert L. Fischer, UC Berkeley professor of plant and microbial biology; John Harada, UC Davis professor of plant biology; Jack Okamuro, UC Santa Cruz associate professor of biology; and Gary Drews, University of Utah assistant professor of biology.
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