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Consider the Plant PossibilitiesOp-edPresident Gregory L. Geoffroy Appeared in Cedar Rapids Gazette, Feb. 7, 2002 What if...you could turn on a corn plant's natural defense mechanisms to pests--before they had a chance to do serious damage to the plant or the grain it produces? That's one of the things Ron Mittler is doing in his research laboratory at Iowa State University. What if...you could "teach" a soybean plant to make a certain kind of protein or starch, such as one that is a key ingredient in a pharmaceutical product? That's one of the things Nicola Pohl is doing in her lab. What if...you could use powerful computers to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with as many as 80,000 pieces--the number of genes in corn--so that you can understand what they do, not only by themselves, but in different sequences and combinations? Five of the leading computer programs to accomplish this have been developed by Xiaoqiu Huang. All three are faculty members at Iowa State University. Mittler's appointment is in botany; Pohl's is in chemistry; Huang's is in computer science. What links them and more than 200 other faculty members together is ISU's Plant Sciences Institute. The Plant Sciences Institute represents the evolution of modern science. These faculty members did not achieve their results working within one specific discipline. They did so working with faculty in many other departments--chemistry with botany; genetics with computer science; plant pathology with molecular biology; sometimes faculty from several departments collaborate on large-scale research projects. This is what the scientific world calls interdisciplinary research, which is just another way of saying "two--or more--heads are better than one." Four years ago, Iowa State launched an initiative to establish ISU and the state of Iowa as the leading center of research in the fundamental and applied plant sciences in the world. Thanks to support from the state of Iowa, which now totals $5 million per year, a very aggressive faculty who bring in over $12 million a year in sponsored funding, and private gifts totaling over $100 million, we are well on our way. As one measure, faculty affiliated with the Plant Sciences Institute have averaged 17 patents on their discoveries for each of the last two years, placing us among the nation's leading universities in applied research. Strengthening ISU's programs in all areas related to the plant sciences is an important objective of the Plant Sciences Institute. But there's an even more important objective, and that's to strengthen Iowa. The biological sciences are advancing at an incredible pace, and this advancement will have a profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives--in the food we eat, the medicines we need, and in the fuel, clothing and building materials that are the basis for our modern way of life. Some even equate it to an economic revolution, all based on the most renewable of resources--plants. Because of their chemical makeup and adaptability to mass production, corn and soybeans are two of the best resources for this new biological economy. No place in the world has better soil or a better climate for growing corn and soybeans than Iowa. And Iowa farmers are the most efficient producers of crops in the world. Add to this mix a world-leading center that generates new knowledge about the development, production and use of these products, as well as our ability to sustain our production ability, and you have just created a center point of this new economy. Iowa State's Plant Sciences initiative is already producing tangible results:
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