Ingo Potrykus

Ingo Potrykus was full Professor of Plant Sciences, specifically of Biotechnology of Plants, at the Institute of Plant Sciences of the ETH Zurich from June 1, 1987 until his retirement on April 1, 1999. His research group applied gene-technology to contribute to food security in developing countries. Together with Peter Beyer, he is one of the co-inventors of golden rice and currently serves as chairman of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board.^[1]

Background

Potrykus was born on December 5, 1933 in Hirschberg/Schlesien, Germany. He studied biology at the University of Cologne and earned his doctorate with a thesis at the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research. After several years at the Institute of Plant Physiology, University of Hohenheim, he became research group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Genetics. In 1976 he transferred to Basel, Switzerland to establish the area of plant genetic engineering at the Friedrich Miescher Institute.^[1]

Research

Motivated by the upcoming food crisis problem of malnutrition in developing countries and the potential of gene technology to contribute to food security, Potrykus and his research group dedicated their work to genetic engineering projects aimed at improving yield stability and food quality of rice, wheat, millets and manioc crops.^[2] The most significant development so far has been the creation of golden rice, a new rice variety providing provitamin A. This strain of rice is widely seen as the model example of how to sustainably reduce malnutrition in developing countries. Potrykus began thinking about using genetic engineering to improve the nutritional qualities of rice in the late 1980s. He knew that of some 3 billion people who depend on rice as their staple crop, around 10% risk some level of vitamin-A deficiency. This problem interested Potrykus for numerous reasons, including the scientific challenge of transferring not just a single gene, but a group of genes that represented a key part of a biochemical pathway. In 1993, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Potrykus teamed up with Peter Beyer and they launched what would become a 7 year, $2.6 million project to develop Golden Rice.^[3]

Since his retirement, Ingo Potrykus - as president of the International Humanitarian Golden Rice Board - is devoting his energy to guiding Golden Rice towards subsistence farmers across the many hurdles of a GMO-crop. To this end collaboration he has been established with 14 rice institutions in India, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Philippines.

Publications.^[1]

• Al-Babili S, Ye X, Lucca P, Potrykus I, Beyer P (2001) Biosynthesis of beta-carotene (provitamin A) in rice endosperm achieved by genetic engineering. Novartis Found Symp 236:219-28; discussion 228-232.
• Beyer P, Al-Babili S, Ye X, Lucca P, Schaub P, Welsch R, Potrykus I (2002) Golden Rice: Introducing the {beta}-Carotene Biosynthesis Pathway into Rice Endosperm by Genetic Engineering to Defeat Vitamin A Deficiency. J. Nutr. 132:506S-510.
• Burkhardt P, Beyer P, Wunn J, Kloti A, Armstrong G, Schledz M, von Lintig J, Potrykus I (1997) Transgenic rice (Oryza sativa) endosperm expressing daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) phytoene synthase accumulates phytoene, a key intermediate of provitamin A biosynthesis. Plant J 11:1071-1078.
• Futterer J, Potrykus I, Bao Y, Li L, Burns T, Hull R, Hohn T (1996) Position-dependent ATT initiation during plant pararetrovirus rice tungro bacilliform virus translation. J. Virol. 70:2999-3010.
• Futterer J, Rothnie H, Hohn T, Potrykus I (1997) Rice tungro bacilliform virus open reading frames II and III are translated from polycistronic pregenomic RNA by leaky scanning. J. Virol. 71:7984-7989.
• Hoa TTC, Al-Babili S, Schaub P, Potrykus I, Beyer P (2003) Golden Indica and Japonica Rice Lines Amenable to Deregulation. Plant Physiology 133:161-169.
• Kloti A, He X, Potrykus I, Hohn T, Futterer J (2002) Tissue-specific silencing of a transgene in rice. PNAS 99:10881-10886.
• Lucca P, Hurrell R, Potrykus I (2002) Fighting Iron Deficiency Anemia with Iron-Rich Rice. J. Am. Coll. Nutr. 21:184S-190.
• Paszkowski U, Zhang S, Potrykus I, Paszkowski J (1993) Replication of the DNA A component of African cassava mosaic virus in a heterologous system. J. Gen. Virol. 74:2725-2729.
• Pietrzak M, Shillito R, Hohn T, Potrykus I (1986) Expression in plants of two bacterial antibiotic resistance genes after protoplast transformation with a new plant expression vector. Nucleic Acids Res. 14:5857-5868.
• Potrykus I (2001) Golden Rice and Beyond. Plant Physiology 125:1157-1161.
• Schlaman H, Gisel A, Quaedvlieg N, Bloemberg G, Lugtenberg B, Kijne J, Potrykus I, Spaink H, Sautter C (1997) Chitin oligosaccharides can induce cortical cell division in roots of Vicia sativa when delivered by ballistic microtargeting. Development 124:4887-4895.
• Ye X, Al-Babili S, Klöti A, Zhang J, Lucca P, Beyer P, Potrykus I (2000) Engineering the Provitamin A (β-Carotene) Biosynthetic Pathway into (Carotenoid-Free) Rice Endosperm. Science 287:303-305.

Awards and Honors.^[1]

• KUMHO (ISPMB) Science International Award in Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology 2000.
• American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Leadership in Science Public Service Award 2001.
• Crop Science of America (CSSA)
• Klepper Endowment Lectureship 2001,
• CSSA President’s Award 2002,
• European Culture Award in Science 2002,
• Honorary Doctor, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences 2002.
• Member of the Pontifical Academy of Science of the Vatican.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Golden Rice. 2010
2. ^ Weasel, Lisa H. 2009. Food Fray. Amacom Publishing
3. ^ Robinson, Simon. "Grains of Hope." Time 31 July 2000. Web