Project: Archive of Agricultural Genetic Engineering and Society Center Interviewee: John Ryals, CEO at Metabolon and Founder of AgBiome Interviewer: Matthew Booker, Alison Wynn, and Kathryn Rindy Interview Date: September 9, 2015 Location: North Carolina State University Length: 01:14:23 Learn more at https://go.ncsu.edu/AAGES SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT AT: https://research.ncsu.edu/ges/files/2017/10/Ryals_John_20150909_Transcript_Final.pdf 00:14 - Could you please tell us your name, your institutions, and your roles? 00:21 - Or even just your current position or your jobs as your imagine them. 00:43 - And what would you—how would you describe what you do every day? 01:16 - So is that mixture of entrepreneurship and science something you imagined being when you were growing up? 08:26 - Yeah, would you tell us about that because that's a momentous—it's a big moment in the history of genetic engineering and agriculture. 08:43 - What do you mean by transform? Would you tell us what that means? 11:24 - So you've described a couple of interesting mergers in your own life that are perhaps unusual, or at least we think of as unusual. The first is that you moved from thinking about molecular biology in humans and in medicine in particular and then moved into agricultural biotechnology and at least I had thought of those often as separate worlds. Was that an easy transition for you? 12:25 - Is it still a big leap? Or is that different now because— 13:39 - Yes, because that's another interesting combination that you represent in your story so far. That is you move from being a lab scientist to being someone who managed a group of scientists to being an entrepreneur and that's another combination that I think is unusual. 22:32 - So your last comments really help answer a question which is you've described a series of terrific basic science questions that you pursued in the same way that a graduate student might want to. And you explained why teaming up with private capital could really make that possible. You could do things on a scale, perform the 10,000 experiments. Did you ever see or feel a tension though between the need to wear your sales hat and your science hat? Did the basic science projects ever—did investors ask for example when is this going to pay off? 23:43 - So some of your colleagues I imagine are in academia. And how does that work—that relationship how does it work for you over time? Do you, for example, you're producing an enormous amount of scientific information which is valuable for them. Is there any give and take there? Do you publish your work in science journals as well as producing it in products? 25:51 - You mentioned that you felt that your own work and your own publications were somewhat different from other companies. Is that right? 27:13 - Do you think that connection to—or that back and forth with the universities has paid off for universities as well? Has some of that basic science flowed back into those programs? 29:57 - Do you think that blockage—that lack of progress in the ontology area has hampered agricultural biotech? Has it [inaudible 00:30:08] paths that might have been taken had that been known? 31:10 - So one of the striking phenomena of discussions or debates over genetic engineering it seems to me is that people seem fairly—the public seems fairly okay with genetic engineering in human health products and pharmaceuticals for example. And they seem much more concerned about or at least there's a lot more discussion about genetic engineering in agriculture. Why do you think that is? What explains that gap? 35:04 - Why do you think we have that gap? The gap of understanding of the public with science. 36:56 - So that fear is striking because again it doesn't seem to apply so much to genetic modification in pharmaceuticals or in health area. I wonder if you have thought—I mean you've worked in both areas and if you've noticed this phenomenon. 43:37 - It’s also true that very few Americans know what a cotton field looks like or have worked in a cotton field and that experience of agriculture is receding. In my case, my great-grandfather was the cotton farmer. And so now that experience perhaps had something to do with it. 48:08 - Well I want to ask you a looking back question. If you look back on your career which of course is still underway. But if you look back on it what do you think are your most important contributions or others would say are your most important contributions to genetic engineering in agriculture in particular? 49:35 - Oh, okay. So it seems to me listening to the progression of your career that—I mean you have a very dynamic skill set. You're a scientist. You're an entrepreneur. You have leadership things. What drives you? What exactly do you think drives you and motivates you? 53:28 - But it didn't keep you from not climbing back up on the cliff, right?