Ceres, Inc., an agricultural biotechnology company based in California, has been awarded a U.S. patent for its iCODE multi-gene trait development system.
iCODE was developed to rapidly create, evaluate and select optimal combinations of genes and their control components for next-generation biotechnology traits in crops such as corn and soybean. The system is significantly more powerful than current practices.
iCODE, which is an acronym for Intelligent Combinatorial Optimization and Directed Evolution, utilizes a plant cell’s own gene-shuffling system to create thousands of test plants with various novel combinations of pre-selected genes and promoters, which are the on-off switches for genes. Due to the efficiency of the system, Ceres says that iCODE can enable new kinds of discoveries and allow even smaller research programs to better compete against much larger competitors.
More information is available here: http://www.ceres.net/News/NewsReleases/2015/08-12-15-News-Rel.html
