Yield10 Bioscience announces Notice of Allowance for U.S. patent covering crop yield trait C4001

Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. (Nasdaq:YTEN), an agricultural bioscience company that 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 its patent application covering the use of C4001 to improve productivity in crops. 

 

The Notice of Allowance relates to Yield10’s U.S. patent application US15/897,958 titled “Transcriptional Regulation for Improved Plant Productivity.” This patent application describes the C4001 yield trait, which is based on the discovery of novel transcription factor genes in plants where an increase in the productivity of photosynthesis results in significant increases in biomass yield and stress tolerance. In the second quarter of 2019, the China National Intellectual Property Administration also granted Yield10 a patent on C4001.  

 

In 2018, Yield10 researchers published a scientific paper in Plant Science demonstrating that switchgrass plants containing C4001 (PvBMY1) showed an increase in leaf and stem biomass of 75 percent to 100 percent, and an increase in root biomass of 85 percent to 140 percent as compared to control plants. Yield10 is evaluating C4001 to improve seed yield in corn in a program started in early 2019, and to improve biomass yield in forage sorghum through a research license signed in 2018 with Forage Genetics International, LLC. 

 

“Our C4001 yield trait represents a promising target for improving biomass yield in certain commercial food and feed crops,” said Oliver Peoples, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Yield10. “We initially identified and characterized the activity of C4001 using switchgrass as a model crop. Currently, C4001 is being evaluated as a strategy to increase productivity and stress tolerance in corn and forage sorghum, where improvements to the crops could provide an important production benefit to growers.” 

 

Yield10 was launched in January 2017 and currently has 21 patents and pending patent applications on discoveries broadly related to new technologies that improve crop productivity and performance.  In 2019, Yield10 was granted a U.S. patent on C3003, a yield trait based on a gene from algae. Yield10 expects the U.S. patent for C4001 to issue later this year.