NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Two Blades Foundation today said it has completed a non-exclusive licensing agreement with KWS SAAT covering Two Blades' Transcription Activator Like effector code technology for genome engineering in certain crops.
The technology is for making specific changes in genomes based on novel sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins. TAL effector proteins can be designed to recognize almost any DNA sequence of interest and specific locations in the genome can be targeted for gene replacement and gene function modulation.
Two Blades holds exclusive rights to the technology in plants. The TAL Code technology was discovered by researchers at Martin-Luther University in Halle, Germany.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Two Blades reached similar deals earlier this year for the TAL Code technology with Bayer CropScience, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The not-for-profit corporation, based in Evanston, Ill., develops durable disease resistance in agricultural crops.
KWS SAAT is a plant breeding firm based in Einbeck, Germany.