Keygene licenses Sequence-Based Genotyping to IGA
Date:06-20-2014
Keygene N.V. and IGA Technology Services recently announced that they have entered into a license agreement in the field of Sequence-Based Genotyping (SBG). Under the agreement IGA Technology Services obtains a non-exclusive license for the commercial offering and use of KeyGene’s patented SBG technology in certain fields of use. The SBG patents protect worldwide methods including RADSeq, GBS and related methods which allow discovery and scoring of genetic markers without genome sequence information in a cost-effective way. These methods are very powerful to characterize breeding germplasm diversity and develop markers for improvement of agronomic traits.
“We are very pleased with licensing IGA Technology Services in this important research field of nextgeneration sequencing based genetic marker analysis. The ability to perform genetic marker discovery and genotyping simultaneously finds widespread use in a huge range of species. This accelerates the genetic improvement of our crops, farm animals and micro-organisms”, said Michiel van Eijk, CSO of KeyGene. “In the light of further advancement of KeyGene’s licensing strategy, we welcome the use of our proprietary SBG technology by commercial service providers such as IGA Technology Services.”
‘Through this agreement with Keygene N.V., we are very pleased to expand our services portfolio to include Sequence-Based Genotyping methods’ said Federica Cattonaro, CEO of IGA Technology Services. ‘This technology has the ability to unleash the fast and massive throughput of next-generation sequencing platforms to large-scale genetics approaches such as linkage mapping, population studies and fingerprinting, in either sequenced or completely unexplored genomes’. Davide Scaglione, Senior Researcher at IGA Technology Services, commented, ‘Marker discovery and genotyping can now reside within a single experiment. Unlike array-based technologies, initial investment can now scale with sample number and benefit from cost reduction of NGS technologies and provide ascertainment bias-free genotyping solutions’.