Marc Van Montagu

Who is Marc Van Montagu?

Marc Van Montagu is a Belgian molecular biologist. He was full professor and director of the Laboratory of Genetics at the faculty of Sciences at Ghent University and scientific director of the Genetics Department of the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology. Together with Jozef Schell he founded the biotech company Plant Genetic Systems Inc. in 1982, of which he was Scientific Director and member of the board of Directors. Marc Van Montagu was also involved in founding the biotech company CropDesign, of which he was a Board member from 1998 to 2004. He is president of the lobby European Federation of Biotechnology and of the Public Research and Regulation Initiative.

Although Marc Van Montagu, et al. were credited with the discovery of the Ti plasmid, the first person to isolate the "Tumor Inducing Principle" later called the Ti plasmid from Agrobacterium and complete Koch's postulates with it in a plant system was Floyd Poruban, a graduate student in the Department of Plant Pathology at The Ohio State University, in 1964. However, together with his colleague Prof.