HELPING LIVESTOCK JUDGING AND ANIMAL RESEARCH REACH NEW HEIGHTS

Dr. Tyrone Artz, a retired orthopedic surgeon, didn’t follow the path be began at Iowa State into the animal agriculture industry. But, his gift of farmland will help ensure future animal scientists the best opportunities.

By Melea Reicks Licht

Dr. Tyrone Artz, a retired orthopedic surgeon in Valley Center, Kan., never forgot the lessons he learned showing livestock in 4-H and as an undergraduate at Iowa State University.

“Showing livestock teaches responsibility and that animals deserve a high quality of life,” he says. “They should be respected and treated decently, and not taken for granted.”

Artz created an estate provision in his will so future students may learn these same lessons as they grow their skills and experience in livestock judging at Iowa State.

As a freshman in animal science in 1960, Artz remembers feeling anxious about “making the grade.” But something he heard at his orientation session stuck with him, even tho ugh the speaker’s name has faded from memory: “Students that have the ‘I will’ fare much better than students that have the I.Q.”

He took the comment to heart, worked hard and gained confidence during his first quarter. His grades were high, and he was accepted to vet school.

He would have “D.V.M” behind his name rather than “M.D.” if it weren’t for an exchange with his local veterinarian while working on his home farm one hot Iowa summer day.

“In the middle of a particularly hot and messy visit our local vet asked me why I’d ever want to do what he did for a living and reminded me doctors work in the comfort of air conditioning,” Artz recalls with a smile. “He told me if I was smart enough for vet school I was certainly smart enough for med school.”

Artz took his vet’s advice. After graduating from Iowa State he completed medical school at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

While his future didn’t play out in animal agriculture, he’s taking steps to ensure future animal scientists trained at Iowa State University have the best opportunities.

Now retired, Artz has invested in both Iowa State and the University of Iowa with a land gift through his estate. His gift to Iowa State also will benefit the College of Veterinary Medicine with the creation of an endowed professorship.

Maynard Hogberg, professor and chair of animal science, says Artz’s gift will provide the margin of excellence over similar programs across the country.

“The Artz Judging Team Fund will assist with recruiting the best students and reinforce our commitment to leadership skills development,” Hogberg says. “It will create an environment for students to interact with and care for animals and to better understand the agricultural and food system.”

The gift also will endow the Artz Chair for Faculty Excellence in Animal Science for a faculty member who has shown distinction in undergraduate education and  research in an area that strengthens and supports animal agriculture in Iowa.

Funds generated from Artz’s endowed gift of farmland will support students, faculty and staff and programming. It will provide travel support, scholarships, professional development, materials, equipment and the development of a stronger advising system. The department will use part of the fund to sponsor and host judging competitions and recruitment programs.

REMOVING BARRIERS TO BETTER HEALTH

Anthony Davis, clinic director and chiropractor, says his background in genetics gives him a unique perspective in enabling the body’s natural ability to heal.

By Melea Reicks Licht

If it is possible to be both serene and passionate at the same time, then Anthony Davis is just that.

Davis (’97 genetics) practically glows as he describes the philosophy that drives his chiropractic practice in Ames.

“The body has a remarkable ability to heal itself from illness as long as there is nothing in the way. My job is to get those barriers out of the way,” he says. “There is so much joy in what I do. I help people get more control over their health. Having the opportunity to do that is such a gift. Every day is different, even when you see the same patients—your radar always has to be up to identify their current needs.”

Davis describes chiropractic care similar to repairing the wiring system in a house.

“We remove stress and interference from the nervous system by adjusting bones. It’s like a wiring system in a house and the vertebra are the circuit breakers. If one is out of place it leads to bad communication between the body and the brain. Discomfort or illness could result,” he says.

Those barriers may contribute to neck or back pain, which chiropractors are best known for treating, but Davis says his treatment can influence the gamut of health issues from digestion to asthma to allergies and beyond.

Davis may be unique in that he came to chiropractic medicine through agriculture.

He became interested biotechnology and genetics while a high school student in Madrid. A self-described “lifelong Iowa Stater,” Davis says once he discovered Iowa State offered a degree in genetics it never crossed his mind to attend any other university. He shared his enthusiasm while at Iowa State playing saxophone in the marching and pep bands.

“Going to chiropractic school was a bit of a left turn for me,” Davis says. “I was working in a lab at Pioneer in Johnston when I realized that I wanted to be more directly involved in helping people.”

A good experience with chiropractic medicine following a sports injury in high school made a lasting impression on Davis. As he explored his options, pursuing a career in chiropractic care rose to the top. His genetics degree armed him with the necessary prerequisites and a unique perspective to approaching chiropractic care.

Davis attended Cleveland Chiropractic College in Kansas City, Mo. He specializes in a method using a small handheld device called an Activator to gently tap vertebra in place. He opened his own practice, Complete Spine and Headache Center, in 2006 in southwest Ames.

Davis lists awareness and acceptance of chiropractic care as a top challenge for his profession. About 8 percent of the U.S. population sees a chiropractor in a given year. He says his ultimate goal is to create a world-class chiropractic center in Ames so he can work to improve the quality of life for his patients and raise awareness and acceptance of his field.

REFEREEING THE SEED INDUSTRY

Chet Boruff, with the Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies and former Deputy Director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, considers industry regulation key to protecting farmers and consumers.

By Melea Reicks Licht

Chet Boruff has made a career protecting agricultural producers and consumers through regulatory affairs.

Boruff (’76 farm operations) is the chief executive officer of the Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies (AOSCA). The organization is “like the NCAA of the seed industry,” he says.

“We govern how the seed industry plays in terms of isolation, handling and maintaining identity, purity and quality. We protect farmers to make sure what they buy is what they get,” Boruff says.

The association’s members are certification agencies in 45 states and Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa. These agencies administer seed certification programs protecting the varietal purity and quality of a wide range of seeds and plant propagating materials.

“AOSCA has always worked to ensure genetic purity and varietal identity are maintained and preserved. We are simply working with different technologies than we were in 1919 when the organization was created,” Boruff says. “We want to make sure there is credibility in the seed market and our members have active participation in decisions regulating the seed industry.”

Throughout his career he has operated a farm near his home in Moline, Ill., which he credits for helping him stay focused in serving agricultural producers and consumers.

Boruff was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity while at Iowa State and met his wife Joy, a journalism grad. What strikes him most about his Iowa State experience is that at the time, he didn’t appreciate student access to “highly-esteemed” professors like Neil Harl, whose lectures were like “opening a fire hose” of knowledge.

Prior to his current position, Boruff worked in agricultural finance, sales and marketing.

Thanks in part to networking and experience gained as part of the inaugural class of the Illinois Agricultural Leadership Program, Boruff was selected to serve as the Deputy Director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture. He worked for seven years under former Governor Jim Edgar, overseeing regulatory and natural resource programs.

Manjit Misra, director of the Seed Science Center and the Biosafety Institute for Genetically Modified Agricultural Products based at Iowa State University, considers Boruff a capable leader and spokesperson with the ability to anticipate and meet the needs of member organizations.

“Under Chet’s leadership, AOSCA has become a visible and effective organization,” Misra says. “AOSCA recently developed an organic seed database that I’m hearing very good things about. They serve both conventional and organic agriculture, giving farmers access and choice.”

The online organic seed finder brings buyers and sellers together and assists organic certifiers. It is one way AOSCA is evolving with the industry.

“The introduction of new types of technology will continue to provide challenges for seed producers and those that regulate and audit the seed industry,” Boruff says, “as will consolidation of companies and the impacts of decreased funding for public agricultural research.”

Boruff says AOSCA will continue to serve and maintain the relevance of seed certifying agencies to the agricultural industry.

NATURE’S PROMISCUOUS REVISERS: TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS

Thomas Peterson uses color in the cob and seed coat to phenotypically track the genetic doings of a transposon that controls red pigment in maize. The gene for red kernel color also produces a natural insecticide.

By Meg Gordon

Thomas Peterson, a leader in transposon biology, does fundamental research that pulls him deep into the swoops, swishes and switches of the corn plant genome.

Sixty-four years ago transposable elements were discovered in maize. Thirty years ago a Nobel Prize was awarded to the scientist who found them. Three years ago, the maize genome map appeared in the pages of the journal Science, confirming that eighty-five percent of the maize genetic hard drive involves transposable elements, “transposons”.

DNA with wanderlust

Transposons are pieces of genetic material that freely and unpredictably caper around the genome. They can contain one gene or many genes, and regulatory elements—the so called junk DNA that scientists now know is anything but junk.

“This is the raw material for evolution,” says Thomas Peterson, Pioneer Chair in Maize Molecular Genetics and professor of genetics, development and cell biology.

Peterson was a graduate student when Barbara McClintock received her Nobel Prize in 1983. “At the time, it was so remarkable that this little piece of DNA could move around the chromosome when common wisdom stated that genes stayed in place,” he says.

In the intervening years, transposable elements have been found within the genomes of most organisms—from Arabidopsis to Homosapien to Xanthomonas.

Mother Nature’s genetic engineering

Plant breeding depends on natural variability recombined to create favorable types of plants. New molecular techniques for engineering DNA such as transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), that target specific sequences and cut the DNA, are making it possible to place genetic modifications where they are most likely to succeed.

But dramatic contributions to natural variability come from transposons. They are Mother Nature’s way of introducing variability—genomic complexity—genetically engineering on a large scale.

Peterson describes their behavior as somewhat like a computer in which the select, insert and delete functions sporadically activate to delete, move, copy and paste chunks of text all over a document. The resulting copy can accumulate duplicate sentences and paragraphs. At first these additions might seem irrelevant or disruptive, but over time some of the duplicate text morphs into prize-winning prose.

”People would like to control transposons but they have a reputation for being wild—if the TALENs approach is a smart bomb then the transposon system is an atom bomb,” says Peterson. “No one wants to unleash the transposon system into their carefully controlled genetic material but, the potential benefit transposons offer is that they open up so many kinds of large changes that are not feasible using any other method.”

Where the fine-tuning begins

About 50 percent of genes present in the maize genus are duplicates. Many sit side by side; others are peppered throughout the genome. Peterson studies relative activity rates and the mechanisms transposons employ to copy, slot in, slip out, or invert whole sections of DNA in maize. A transposon containing the maize gene for red kernel color allows Peterson to track its activity phenotypically (visually) through cob and kernel.

Transposon capering is enabled by an enzyme called transposase that frees the element with what Peterson believes is a clean cut to the DNA. Whether the transposon reinserts as a simple relocation or a large chromosomal rearrangement appears to be determined by the number of surrounding transposons and which end of a given transposon is cut and therefore activated.

Furthermore, environmental stresses such as heat and cold appear to encourage transposon-enabled gene duplication. Peterson’s current work proposes a new mechanism whereby endpoints of neighboring transposons contribute the scaffolding for rapid reprinting of side-by-side copies of a gene or its removal.

“Once you make two copies of a gene, one can change or adapt, developing a new function such as coding for a protein that recognizes a specific pathogen and confers disease resistance,” says Peterson. The other copy preserves the original function. Alternatively, deleting or disrupting a gene that has a negative effect on the organism can confer new advantage.