AgTech360
AgTech360
New Center, New Frontier: Tim Kelliher Leads NC State’s Genome Editing Mission
Newly appointed Director of NC State’s Genome Editing Center (GEC), Tim Kelliher, shares his unique path from organic farming to the forefront of plant science. He explains how advances in genome editing offer a faster, more precise alternative to traditional breeding—delivering vital solutions for farmers in as little as 5–8 years. Get an inside look at the GEC and how genome editing is shaping the future of agriculture.
Speaker 1:
AgTech360 discusses breakthrough technologies that are impacting growers, businesses, and consumers. Hear from industry and academic experts about what's on the horizon.
Adrian Percy:
Welcome to AgTech360. Today we're joined by a new face at NC State, but a seasoned leader in plant science, and it's my pleasure to welcome Tim Kelleher, Director of the new Genome Editing Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
Tim Kelliher:
Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Adrian Percy:
Great to have you, Tim. So Dr. Kelliher joins us to share his vision for the GEC, his future vision, because this is really a new initiative. We see this as a really bold new effort that aims to accelerate gene editing research in plants and bring cutting-edge solutions to the field faster. We'll discuss what genome editing means for the future of farming, how NC State is uniquely positioned to lead this work and why innovation in plant science is moving faster than ever from lab to field. So Tim, let's get started.
Tim Kelliher:
Let's do it.
Adrian Percy:
So first off, let's hear a bit about you. I'm really curious, as a new person coming into NC State with a new position, tell us a little bit about your background and what drew you to a career in plant science and also genome editing.
Tim Kelliher:
I was 18 or 19 years old, I was a freshman in college and I hated biology. At that time, I remember I was taking chemistry classes and I wasn't feeling happy where I was. I felt a little lost about what am I going to do, and I ended up deciding to take a year off and I found through the college career services center-
Adrian Percy:
And which college was this?
Tim Kelliher:
This was at Swarthmore College outside of Philly, a job on an organic farm that was in central Pennsylvania with a former Swarthmore graduate. And I said, okay, I'm going to go work with this guy. So I called him up.
Adrian Percy:
Out of the blue?
Tim Kelliher:
Out of the blue, no farming experience, and I said, "I will come and work on your farm. I'll work 12 hours a day. You don't have to pay me at all. I've got a tent and whatever work you have for me, I'll take it." And so I spent that summer and the following fall and winter working on his farm and then traveling to New York and working on some apple orchards and animal farms there. And initially it was just I wanted a break from the education. I just wanted to dive in. I always kind of liked plants, but as I said, I wasn't a big biology nerd or anything. Those months were the best time of my life. Just being able to work with plants every day, learn how to grow crops every day, and just with your hands in the dirt, it made me fall in love with plants.
And interestingly enough, this guy, while he was an organic farmer, he was a pretty open-minded guy and quite a bright guy. And I remember we got talking about biotechnology, and he was saying, as an organic farmer, he thinks GMOs are great and he would love to have the ability to grow them because he doesn't have to spray as much. And he's talking about how they can do all these different things. And that really opened my mind to, I had been kind of more in the organic farming mindset of like, oh, any industry concept is bad. So anyways, this really opened up my mind a little bit and say, you know what? I think I want to go back and study science. I'd much rather have a chance to have a larger impact on agriculture rather than having my own farm or something like that. So that got me back into courses in college and then eventually went to graduate school at Stanford to study plant development and reproduction.
Adrian Percy:
So before we talk about a little bit of your vision for the GEC, let's talk a bit more kind of basics. For folks who aren't so familiar with what genome editing is, can you explain it just at a high level, but also contrast it with traditional breeding methods for crops and with transgenic GMO crop production as well?
Tim Kelliher:
Sure. Yeah. Genome editing is a really exciting tool because, well, if a traditional breeding project from start to finish, you start with taking two lines that have different traits that you want to combine together. It doesn't just take a couple of years to bring those two traits together and bring something to market. Breeding is so complex, there's so many traits that you have to monitor that if you start a breeding project in 2020, you'll probably get it into the farmer's hands in 2035 or maybe even 2040. I mean, it's a long time and a lot of money and field space needed to do that work. And whenever you want to bring a new trait, like a new disease resistance trait, if you're doing it through conventional breeding, it's not only that timeframe, it's the scale. Because you don't just want to bring that trait to one line. You're not selling one line to farmers in Iowa and in Arkansas. There's a whole diversity of genetic backgrounds that represent the "market."
So you've got to bring that trait into dozens or hundreds of different lines. And so the scale of breeding process is quite impressive. Genome editing offers a shortcut to all of that. It mimics what happens in nature in terms of in nature, there are spontaneous mutations that take place every generation just from crops sitting out under the sun, X-rays from the sun will mutate the DNA, and you get new traits every year. Breeding takes advantage of that. Genome editing is basically mimicking that process, but it's happening in a much more precise way and a much faster way so that we can often take traits that are found in nature or that are existing in the plant and bring them into the elite cultivars directly. And so that way we can make improvements in the germplasm and the lines that farmers are using in a much shorter timeframe. So instead of a breeding project, taking 15 years, a genome editing project can take 5 or 8 years, and you can make an improvement directly in the materials that farmers are using in their fields.
Adrian Percy:
So quicker, more efficient, less costly, and distinguished from what we would call GM approaches in that you are not bringing in a gene from a other species, normally a soil bacterium, and so overcome a lot of the regulatory challenges that you would have with that type of technology?
Tim Kelliher:
Yeah. And I mean, let's be clear, I'm a big GM guy. I love GM foods. Anytime I see the opportunity to talk about this, I love to talk about it at parties or whatnot. GM crops have improved farmers' income by about $300 billion, the estimate is over the past 25 years. They've increased yields, they've reduced dependency on chemicals. There is a lot of regulations around GM, so it costs about $100 million for a company to bring a GMO product to market. There's a huge amount of investment that has to go in, finding the genes, figuring out how to put them in the right configuration. And then all of the safety studies. I mean, there's incredible amount of regulatory safety studies needed to make sure that the new materials are safe for the environment and safe for people. So genome editing is when you're taking the plant's existing DNA and making a small modification, sometimes as small as just 1 base pair out of 5 billion. And again, these are making the kinds of modifications that already exist in nature.
And the idea is that regulatory policy, at least as it's coming into shape in the U.S. and Europe and around the world, is much less stringent or restrictive, I'd say on the gene editing front than it is on GM. And so it's not going to cost $100 million for someone to bring a gene-edited product to market because there's not a need for that level of safety studies around something that already exists in nature or that can be easily produced through traditional breeding. And so you have the benefits of both worlds. You have the opportunity to take advantage of all of the biological knowledge and genetics knowledge we now have with a tool that's precise, it's safer and it's safer to use, it's very precise. And instead of a 20-year timeline to market, you can bring something in 5 or 8 years. And what I'm really excited is about the opportunity for this technology to solve the challenges we have in the future.
Speaker 1:
The North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative impacts lives through innovative applications and discoveries. By leveraging cutting-edge research and technology, we address global challenges related to agriculture, sustainability, and human health.
Adrian Percy:
And that was going to be my question. So given the precise nature that you're working with an existing genome of a particular plant, what kind of traits do you feel that genome editing lends itself to most effectively?
Tim Kelliher:
Well, I think the first one that comes to mind is disease traits. So just like in people, there are bacterial pathogens, viruses that are constantly attacking the crops that we grow. And so you don't see a lot of GM solutions for disease or for stress or other agronomic traits. And so gene editing needs to fill that gap. And I think, again, it has the opportunity to, because of the knowledge we have, the precision of the technology and the scale at which it can be deployed.
Adrian Percy:
So let's talk about the new Genome Editing Center. So big congratulations. You've just been named the Roberts and Mikhail Distinguished Chair in Plant Genome Editing, which is quite a mouthful, but it's a wonderful thing to have you here. So what does this role entail and what is the vision behind the new Genome Editing Center for Sustainable Agriculture?
Tim Kelliher:
So in short, I think we want this center to be the collaborator of choice, the partner of choice for both academic and industry organizations across the world. When somebody has an idea about how to use genome editing, we want them within a few years after we get established to come to us and to say, "At NC State, this is where we can get the work done." The opportunity for this center is to work on a wide diversity of crops to solve real challenges that farmers are facing today. We have an ambition to bring something to the market within the next six years. That is not an easy thing to do when you consider the typical timeframes for doing something like this. And we have the ambition to work on a diversity of crops that are important not only for North Carolina, but the Southeast in general and even beyond.
Adrian Percy:
It sounds to me, Tim, like you're very much focused on creating impact in terms of developing new traits and actually helping them to get to the market, I guess. And there are various routes to doing that. Do you see yourself ultimately working then on a whole range of different crops, both row crops, specialty crops, perhaps even ornamentals?
Tim Kelliher:
I think so. We have a transformation lab here that's been established the last six or seven years that has developed transformation capabilities in typical row crops like corn and soy, and that also can transform ornamentals and other horticultural crops. And so I think they've been working on rows and there's a few others. So we've got quite a diversity of opportunities here, I think, and this is one of the reasons why I was so excited about this position being at NC State, is this diversity of technical expertise in all these different crops. And then we have the transformation lab at the genomics facilities and the expertise on campus to bring that all together.
And so I do see the center as being one that is working on a wide diversity of projects. We're not just focused on corn or soybean or something like that, but we're going to have a diverse array of things that we can do. And I think what's important is that in our first few projects, as we develop things, as we learn how to do this better, it's going to get easier as we go along and move on to other projects. So I think we're picking our first couple projects carefully to make sure that it has high impact, it's relevant, but that we also can have that technical success and then learn and bridge it into other specialty crops as we go forward.
Adrian Percy:
And I'm curious, as you attack this new role at NC State, how has your time, your decade or 12 years at Syngenta, how has that kind of informed how you see getting these types of products to market and having that impact in as shorter period as possible?
Tim Kelliher:
I think the center, we want to be mindful of the path to market. So what I've learned, we don't want to just do research for research's sake. And I think it's very important as we start to get into the design phase of what are we going to edit and how are we going to go about it? We have the commercialization in mind. Part of that is being really keen and aware of what industries, what the different industries, different companies are working on, what they have solutions for and what they don't, so that we can know what gaps to fill, what opportunities there are.
And I think the other piece of it is just having that mindset of we're in this to win. We are not here to have some nice discoveries and have some publications and give ourselves a pat on the back. We want to make a difference. And so when you're in that mindset, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard of the work that you're doing, the plants that you're growing, how you're phenotyping and evaluating the performance of these things. And I think having that industry mindset where you're in kind of competition is going to blend well, I hope with the academic mindset of having new ideas and innovation constantly on the front of mind.
Adrian Percy:
That would be the sweet spot. And you mentioned earlier about working with different companies and I guess different stakeholders, and you're obviously getting informed about things like the challenges the sweet potato industry in North Carolina faces. What's going to be the flavor of those stakeholders you work with in the future from farmers through to technology providers?
Tim Kelliher:
I think the way that we want to work with these is we want to first of all, have a good communication with farmers, especially locally, to make sure we're in touch with their needs and their challenges, and that we can work on solutions that they can get excited about. We want to also be mindful of the opportunities that provides us to expand those technologies and have them brought to market by different corporate partners, whether that's commodity groups or large seed companies. Those larger companies can also support by taking our initial discoveries and testing them in a broader range of germplasm, and then working to deliver them to the commercial cultivars and commercial lines. And certainly we want to be inventing technologies and developing those that can accelerate that and bring those things to market faster. But I think the critical thing is knowing and having a sense of which partner you need at which point in time to help you move quickly and what their gaps are and where they're interested in working with somebody like us to move their ideas forward.
Adrian Percy:
And so now looking forward, I mean, what excites you? What's getting your kind of blood boiling about in a good way, about coming to NC State, bringing your experience from industry? What are you looking forward to?
Tim Kelliher:
I think that the potential here is really limitless. And so again, I'm so excited to be at a place where we have that expertise and the innovation culture and the ideas, and also sort of the practical focus that this institution brings, where the motto here is, "Think and do." And I just love that because we're not messing around, we're not writing white papers. We want to really get our hands dirty and change the game. And so I think that being in this new culture and also bringing my connections to industry, I'm hoping is going to be the right mix to really make a big impact going forward.
Adrian Percy:
So last question, which is the crystal ball question, which I think is a little bit unfair, given you've only been here a couple of weeks, but I know you've been thinking about this for a long time. Fast-forward 5, even 10 years, because these projects take a while, as you've said, what does success look like for yourself, for the university, and most importantly for agriculture?
Tim Kelliher:
Well, I think step one is, I hope within the next year or two, the European Union adopts the European Commission's recommendation on new genetic technologies, which covers gene editing and puts them in a category as being not regulated or being exempt from regulation. That's what the USDA has done. That's what Chile, Brazil, India, I mean, many other countries have already done, and the European Union is very close to doing that. Once that happens, it's going to be more of open doors and race to the market for a lot of these gene editing, new varieties. Success looks like 10 years from now, NC State can say that there are three or four different things that farmers are using that are solving their problems that came from the Gene Editing Center, that came from innovators here at NC State that use gene editing technology. We want to see farmers coming to us and saying, "Thank you for bringing this to us, and here's our next challenge." If we have that in 10 years, I think that'll be a great success.
Adrian Percy:
Tim, once again, welcome to NC State. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for telling us about your vision for the Genome Editing Center. I am so excited that you have joined this university. I'm so excited to see what comes out of this whole effort. And as you know, we're all here to support you.
Tim Kelliher:
Thank you.
Speaker 1:
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