Josh’s experience on helping to give crops the tools to defend themselves

Josh Bennett, a John Innes Centre student completed his PIPS with Resurrect Bio, a plant biotech start-up, working on immune systems of economically important crop species, based in London.

Resurrect Bio screens for pathogen suppressors of plant resistance genes with the intent of then engineering these R-genes to avoid suppression. The goal for these engineered R-genes is to use gene editing to resurrect R-genes to make them functional once again.

The PIPS project objective was to help develop a new high-throughput screening platform whilst gaining an understanding of how academic research is transferred to the real world in an industry start-up. Josh focussed on learning new techniques and expanding his scientific network whilst discussing science in a different environment. Plus, he also wanted the experience of living in a big city.

Resurrect Bio is an agile, small start-up with an open plan wet lab meaning Josh was constantly in contact with colleagues from many different scientific backgrounds to discuss ongoing progress. He enjoyed this multi-disciplinary team working which supported gaining different perspectives on his work.

Josh worked to provide proof of concept and steps towards optimising a successful screening pipeline. He achieved success in other side projects too such as tissue culture and setting up a workflow in alternative model systems. He enjoyed the challenges faced when trying to optimise a pipeline for efficiency and accuracy. He had to be creative and try several approaches to achieve one goal, and he valued the discussions with lab members. The placement challenged his academic point of view and helped him to understand how biotech products are created and delivered to the market.

Dr Imogen Binnian, Josh’s supervisor at Resurrect Bio said, “the skills and knowledge Josh brought from his PhD in a highly relevant field enabled him to make meaningful contributions and help us by optimising a new method which in the future will hopefully become a part of our screening pipeline. At the same time, he has been a pleasure to have in the lab and has had a great attitude to learning new skills. He has also been exposed to the daily life in a start-up and the differences in daily running of that compared to an academic lab. Josh has been able to work quite independently from early on in his placement whilst being very open to discussion about his project and other projects ongoing in the company.”

Josh’s advice to other students is, “do a placement on a topic you are interested in, do it in your second or third year and in a place you will enjoy living in. One of the benefits of working outside academia is you may experience a different work/life balance.”