Mowgli Holmes to Speak at TFNW About the Tech of Pot

Mowgli Holmes doesn't think companies like Monsanto should be able to patent cannabis strains. That's why the Chief Scientific Officer at biotech startup Phylos Bioscience is working with Open Cannabis Project to share all sequenced strains that are already in the public domain. But that's only a small part of what Holmes, who has a Ph.D. from Columbia University, has been working on.

"It's such a complicated world getting research done on a plant that's illegal," Holmes says, via phone. "I'm in the lab way less than I thought I'd be…spending most of my time figuring how to get things done, without breaking the law."

Researchers like Holmes often work with academic institutions with existing facilities to help make their research more effective, but academia in our country is shut out from helping thanks to restrictions built in to their federal funding. With such barriers in place, companies like venture-backed Phylos Bioscience truly are the leading edge of a cannabis industry that's looking to blow up.

"Obviously this industry is massive and exploding," Holmes says. "In a few years, this will be the third-largest agriculture industry in the United States."

That's a mighty assumption, but considering how little research has been done about cannabis as a plant—very, very little—Holmes may not be wrong.

After moving home to Portland in 2014 from NYC, Holmes says it was "bloody obvious you're supposed to start a cannabis genomics company," so he did. His largest, current project, a partnership with the American Museum of Natural History, is a visualization of cannabis' evolutionary map, parts of which he plans to include in his TFNW speech. He will also share how the cannabis genome resembles the human genome in bizarre ways, virtually mimicking the human population as it spread across the globe.

With two young kids, a passion for drumming and a penchant for events like Burning Man, Holmes doesn’t see his love for sequencing DNA from cannabis plants decreasing any time soon.
  
Holmes, who works from an office inside OHSU, is particular excited about Oregon’s role in the cannabis industry and hopeful for what we’re going to accomplish.

“We just do things differently here. We’re about to make a totally different model, and the one the rest of the nation follows,” Holmes says. “The legislators are open minded and everybody is trying to do it right. Compared to WA and CO, at least.”

WWeek 2015