AgroPages-Yield10 Bioscience announces Notice of Allowance for U.S. patent covering crop yield trait C3003-Agricultural news

Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. (Nasdaq:YTEN), an agricultural bioscience company which uses its “Trait Factory” to develop high value seed traits for the agriculture and food industries, today announced that it has received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office allowing a patent application covering the use of C3003 to improve seed yield in crops.

The Notice of Allowance relates to U.S. patent application No. 2016/032,6541 entitled “Plants with enhanced photosynthesis and methods of manufacture thereof.” Yield10 is the exclusive licensee of this intellectual property from The University of Massachusetts. The C3003 yield trait is based on a transporter gene derived from algae that can be used to increase seed yield in plants. C3003 is believed to play a role in carbon capture and directing carbon to seed. Yield10 is testing C3003 as a technology to increase seed yield in major crops including Camelina, canola, soybean and corn. Further work by Yield10 with C3003 has produced additional discoveries including C3004, a promising novel yield trait based on a plant gene and potentially accessible through CRISPR genome-editing. Yield10 filed a patent application on discoveries related to C3004 in 2018.

“The C3003 seed yield trait represents an important cornerstone of our intellectual property portfolio and technology platform,” said Oliver Peoples, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Yield10. “We have generated a series of encouraging results testing C3003 in field studies of oilseed crops, including canola, and will continue field evaluation this year. In addition, we recently expanded the evaluation of C3003 as part of our early development program in corn. We plan to continue to generate intellectual property around our discoveries and form collaborations to advance development and commercialization of our traits in the major commercial crops.”