Kevin Potter

Kevin Potter is currently an Assay Development Scientist II at Locus Biosciences. Prior to this, Kevin was a Plant Metabolism Scientist at Elo Life Systems from June 2019 to September 2021. There, they led the metabolic engineering efforts for the ZeroMelon project and improved production of high-intensity sweeteners by over 300x. Kevin was also responsible for detailed trait evaluation of product lines by conducting expression and metabolic profiling, mapping insertion sites, phenotyping and executing greenhouse trials. Kevin generated next generation sequencing datasets (WGS, RNA-Seq and ATAC-Seq) across several crop species for product development.

Before their time at Elo Life Systems, Kevin was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from September 2015 to June 2019. There, they integrated RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq and ATAC-Seq methods to profile changes in gene expression, transcription factor binding and accessible chromatin landscapes, respectively, in response to cytokinin treatment in rice and Arabidopsis to build transcriptional regulatory networks and models. Kevin also utilized forward and reverse genetics approaches, including CRISPR-Cas9, to screen and identify new members of the cytokinin two-component signaling pathway and then study their function in the pathway as well as in plant growth and development.

Potter earned their Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from Iowa State University. Kevin also holds a Bachelor's degree in Biology from Graceland University.