Member Profiles

One of the great strengths of the Society for In Vitro Biology is our membership. As a new recurring feature, we will be including several membership profiles in each published issue of the In Vitro Report. Our goal is that these profiles will help our membership to stay connected and possibly promote collaborations amongst our SIVB members. T. Michael Spencer, Co-Chair of the Plant Biotechnology Section, and Valerie Pence, Secretary of the Plant Biotechnology Section, have submitted membership profiles for this issue of the In Vitro Report.

T. Michael Spencer, Transformation Strategy Lead, Monsanto Company

I believe my first SIVB (TCA) meeting was in 1988. Since that time, I have been in attendance at every meeting possible, and have been most active over the last ten years. The SIVB is a unique society – in particular relative to my career and research interests, it remains the only society with a consistent nucleus of plant tissue culture and transformation scientists. The cross-Kingdom make-up (Animal and Plant) of the Society if fantastic too – providing interaction across diverse yet related research fields. I continue to enjoy and benefit from my involvement in SIVB.

I received a B.S. in biology from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1980 and an M.S. degree in Plant Science, with emphasis on plant tissue culture, from the University of Delaware in 1987. I spent the next year and a half at American Cyanamid in Princeton, New Jersey, working on tissue culture selection of herbicide tolerant wheat mutants.

In 1988, I joined DEKALB Plant Genetics, working on various aspects of corn transformation system development, focusing primarily on the identification of a viable selectable marker system and optimization of direct DNA delivery systems. Those were very exciting times – in 1990, the DEKALB team was the first research group to publish a method for development of fertile transgenic corn. From 1993-1995, I coordinated molecular and cell biology efforts to develop Roundup® (glyphosate) tolerant corn, ultimately yielding the commercial Roundup® tolerant corn seed product (GA21). In 1995, I assumed the role as Regulatory Affairs Manager for DEKALB completing U.S. and foreign regulatory approvals for DEKALB’s corn borer resistant Bt corn product, Bt ExtraTM (DBT418).

In 1997, I became responsible for managing corn transformation activities for DEKALB, and upon the acquisition of DEKALB in 1998, I shared responsibility for the combined DEKALB-Monsanto corn transformation team until 2005. From 2005-2008, I managed the Monsanto corn transformation platform, including Production activity and Discovery projects. In 2008, I moved into my current role where I am responsible for general strategy development for the Transformation Program including competitive intelligence, intellectual property, and alliances/in-licensing across crop transformation functions.

Valerie Pence, Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

When I was hired to develop a plant conservation research program at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, I had no inkling that I would have the good fortune to work with such a wide variety of species and in vitro methods as has been the case. My first introduction to in vitro plant culture came during grad school at Northwestern University with James Lippincott, working on the physiology of crown gall tumors in vitro. After that, I had the good fortune to work as a post-doc with several other in vitro systems: cacao somatic embryogenesis at Purdue, with Jules Janick and Mike Hasegawa; cereal suspension cultures at the University of Florida with Indra Vasil; and tomato mutant cultures at the University of Cincinnati, with John Caruso. It was at UC that I met Vic Soukup, a trillium expert, with whom I collaborated on culturing trilliums—a project that eventually led to my position with the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden’s research program, also known as CREW, the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife. There, I have been able to work with more than 50 of some of the rarest species in the U.S., developing protocols for in vitro propagation, cryopreservation, and in vitro collecting. Working with such a diverse group of species has provided the opportunity to observe patterns in the in vitro responses of species with very different life forms and environmental adaptations, an area that we are beginning to explore more systematically.

Although I consider myself a lab scientist, my work has also given me the opportunity to occasionally get out into the field to such widely diverse habitats as Trinidad, Utah, Florida, and Kentucky, to collect seeds and tissues, and to participate in outplanting some of the plants we have produced. When trips coincided with spring break, I was able to take my daughter with me as my assistant, from about the age of 9 until she left for college. As she got older, she became a valuable help in the field, with a good eye for finding rare plants scattered among a backdrop of many other species. I like to think that, even if she doesn’t pursue plants as a career, she has had experiences that have provided support for her keen interest in the environment.

We have a large group of collaborators, many from labs and botanical gardens affiliated with the Center for Plant Conservation. Much of our funding has come from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and we have recently been awarded an IMLS grant to systematically evaluate survival of almost 1000 samples (most are tissues from in vitro cultures) that have been stored in liquid nitrogen in our CryoBioBank, some for close to 20 years.

My connection with SIVB goes back about 25 years. Although my position at a botanical garden is unusual within the Society, I have always felt welcome. It has been a privilege to know and learn from other members, many of them pioneers in the field. I’ve enjoyed being more involved in the organization and hope to continue to contribute to, as well as benefit from, the SIVB. I see in vitro methods as critical for the conservation and propagation of many rare and threatened plant species, and the SIVB is the premier organization for promoting in vitro plant research and facilitating collaborations in the field.

For further information, please contact the Editors-in-Chief, Michael Fay (mfayxx@midwestern.edu) and Sylvia Mitchell (sylviamitchell.biotech@gmail.com) or Managing Editor, Michele Schultz (michele@sivb.net).