Biotech Updates

Dow AgroSciences and Sangamo BioSciences Announce Biotech Milestones

June 13, 2008

Dow AgroSciences LLC and Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. recently announced the completion of research milestones regarding the use of Sangamo’s zinc finger DNA-binding protein (ZFP) technology to the generation of specific traits in maize and canola. The ZFP technology can accelerate the process of ‘trait stacking’. Trait stacking is when two traits like herbicide-tolerance and insecticide-tolerance are introduced simultaneously into a crop in one transformation event.

Scientists from both companies used ZFP Nucleases (ZFNs™) to place a herbicide resistance gene into a specified location of the maize genome in a rapid, single-step process. Sangamo’s ZFP transcription factor (ZFP TF™) technology, on the other hand, was used to achieve the second milestone, the control of the expression of a native gene in canola.

Read the press release at http://www.dowagro.com/newsroom/corporatenews/2008/20080605a.htm.