Norwich, United Kingdom
May 13, 2010
Eagle Genomics Ltd. in close collaboration with Martin Trick and Ian Bancroft from the John Innes Centre have signed a collaboration agreement to establish a commercial service for a new plant breeding research technology, TraitTag.
The genetic variations between individual plants can be used to identify key parts of the genome, known as biomarkers, which can be used to allow plant breeders to test for the presence of positive traits when selecting specimens to breed. TraitTag allows breeders to identify these biomarkers quickly and effectively through the identification and scoring of variations across very large sets of plants. The key advantage of TraitTag is that it does not require a full reference genome of the plant. This enables plant breeders to use it even when no prior major research has been done into the genome of the plant species they are working with.
With TraitTag, plant breeders can select and breed bigger, better, higher quality plants in less time and at lower cost than previously possible. This leads directly to improvements in quality and yield of all kinds of plants including food crops.
The promise of the TraitTag technology, a sequence-based tool to accelerate crop breeding, has already received recognition as a finalist in the BBSRC Innovator of the Year 2010 competition (http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/media/news/2010/100219-finalists-announced-for-20000-innovation-prize.aspx).
The collaboration between Eagle Genomics Ltd. and the John Innes Centre will look into the options for offering TraitTag as a commercial service to plant breeders worldwide. Eagle's expertise in bioinformatics software development will be invaluable in developing and improving the TraitTag software to withstand the demands of large-scale commercial use, whist the John Innes Centre will continue to review and refine the underlying techniques to continually improve the service. Revenue from commercial sales will be shared under a unique agreement that fits closely with Eagle Genomics' commitment to supporting academic software in the commercial environment.
Eagle Genomics Ltd. is a bioinformatics software company specialising in the provision of
open-source solutions. Based in Cambridge, UK at the heart of Europe's largest biotech
cluster, the company has rapidly become one of the leading providers of open-source
bioinformatics technical support to customers around the world.
3. The John Innes Centre, www.jic.ac.uk, is an independent, world-leading research centre
in plant and microbial sciences with over 500 staff. JIC is based on Norwich Research
Park and carries out high quality fundamental, strategic and applied research to
understand how plants and microbes work at the molecular, cellular and genetic levels.
The JIC also trains scientists and students, collaborates with many other research
laboratories and communicates its science to end-users and the general public. The JIC
is grant-aided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
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