Innovative People

Illimar Altosaar

Illimar Altosaar Illimar Altosaar has worked alongside notable scientists such as Sir Ralph Riley (Rockefeller Foundation Rice Biotech Network), Sir Hans Kornberg (Biochemistry Dept., Cambridge) and Sir Ernst Chain, Nobel Laureate for penicillin fermentation (Imperial College). Together with his family heritage in engineering (textiles, pulp & paper sectors), and his diverse experiences in pharmaceutical and agri-food industries, Prof. Altosaar is deploying gene technology in critical areas such as Protein Farming, phytoremediation and greenhouse gas mitigation. He was Visiting Scientist at Nestlé (2000), Tartu University (1993-95), INRA France (92-3), University of Cambridge (84-85) and a NATO Fellow in Biochemistry at Imperial College (75-77).
Molecular mechanisms has been the ethos of Dr. Altosaar’s research efforts since he first began working in cereal genetics in 1966 at the Quebec Provincial Seed Farm, Macdonald College Campus, Faculty of Agriculture, McGill University, Montreal. A protein chemist by training, he has studied the gene regulation in small grains and oilseeds. He is one of the pioneers to explore the “Seed as Pill”. As a potential vaccine production process, his team was the first to direct the synthesis of human CytoMegaloVirus protein gB in a tissue-specific manner. The rice glutelin promoter has yielded high rates of expression of foreign proteins, including human insulin-like growth factor and Hepatitis Virus vaccine candidates. In parallel efforts to increase the world’s food supply, he has been instrumental in supplying useful gene cassettes to crop breeding programs throughout the world. His plant codon optimized Bacillus thuringiensis sequences for cry 1Ab and cry1Ac have been deployed in more than 35 various crop species in more than 75 countries. More recently his lab has helped discover a link between a wheat protein and Type 1 Diabetes in children and is using genetic engineering to ‘cure’ wheat of this diabetogenic gene. Now, Bio-engineering of nitrous oxide reductase in rhizospheres and is ongoing. Besides Proteins Easy, many industrial biotech start-ups have been fostered in his labs. Current interests include gene technology, DNA, RNA, micro RNA, flanking sequence recovery, GMOs, Bt toxin, Bacillus thuringiensis, Insect Resistance, protein chemistry, protein modification, vaccines, conjugated-vaccines

Languages Illimar Altosaar speaks:

German
English
French
Greek, Estonian