NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Boost Biomes, a startup focused on identifying commercially viable microbial products, announced today its launch with a $2.1 million seed funding round.
San Francisco-based Boost Biomes will use the funds to develop microbiome-based products with an initial focus in agriculture. The firm plans to use its first two products to improve crop yield in the field and reduce spoilage after harvest. Boost Biome's products are currently being evaluated in commercially relevant trials.
The company is a graduate of the Illumina Accelerator, and its platform uses high-throughput next-generation sequencing, selective enrichment, and advanced informatics to identify microbes with important commercial roles. The technology leverages decades of research by University of California, Berkeley professor Adam Arkin on the use of DNA sequencing to understand microbial ecology.
The funding round is led by Nimble Ventures and Viking Global Investors, and includes other participants such as Tencent.
"Our goal is to demonstrate that our approach can sift diversity more efficiently, and arrive at solutions that are more effective than traditional approaches," Boost Biomes cofounder Rob McBride said in a statement.