Biological discover company Synomics launches new product to accelerate target discovery

Synomics, the biological discovery company has launched DISCOVER, a novel product specifically designed to support progressive companies and producers in unlocking new, powerful insights from their own biological data quicker than has ever been done before.

By unlocking more insight, Synomics DISCOVER can be used to accelerate developments in the health, efficiency and sustainability of crops and animals.

Synomics DISCOVER uses a proprietary combinatorial analytics approach to efficiently mine novel relationships from biological data and provide more explanatory power for complex disease and performance traits than previously possible.

Dr Peter Kristensen, CEO of Synomics, says such traits are not explained by simple genetic variation: "Understanding the complex biological interactions that determine complex disease and performance traits is challenging. In fact, it is virtually impossible to identify the features driving these traits using standard approaches, which is why we have developed a proprietary suite of technologies and packaged them together for the first time.

"Our novel DISCOVER product is designed to support anyone involved in developing new treatments or innovations to further improve the health, performance and sustainability of our crops, livestock and companion animals."

COO Gareth Llewellyn says that the way Synomics manages client data is important: "Our novel approach doesn't require the extensive datasets typically needed by standard machine learning or artificial intelligence approaches," he explains. "In fact, DISCOVER treats each dataset as a blank canvas, meaning we don't 'learn' or 'train' models from one project to another, so we easily create complete segregation between the data we work on, providing piece of mind to our customers."

Synomics DISCOVER is a proprietary platform based on a novel mathematical framework capable of rapidly mining high-order biological interactions - so called 'combinatorial analytics' - including Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and genes. DISCOVER statistically and bioinformatically validates these findings to unlock key, novel biological networks that drive complex traits.

DISCOVER starts by taking any form of genotype and phenotype data and automatically performing best-in-class quality control on the data. The resulting datasets are then mined using proprietary algorithms to progressively identify key SNP and gene interactions related to the phenotype. These interactions are then analysed using rigorous statistical processes before undertaking bioinformatic assessment to validate outputs.

The application of Synomics' proprietary combinatorial analytics platform powers DISCOVER to reveal novel targets for its commercial partners across a range of applications. These range from validating and filtering existing discovery pipelines to target discovery for new therapeutics or understanding microbiome and host-genome interactions for probiotic design through to identifying high-potential gene-editing targets.

Dr Jon Lightner, Executive Chairman of Synomics, says that through DISCOVER, scientists will be able to identify the reasons why some animals and plants are more productive or resilient: "We are giving the industry the ability to learn more about their animals and crops with insights they have not been previously able to liberate from the data they already hold," he says.

"Our technology can unlock the next wave of understanding of the relationship between subtle biology and observable outcomes, and the application of this understanding will make positive impacts in food production and pet care."

Synomics is part of Grosvenor Food & AgTech.