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Keygene N.V.

www.keygene.com

THE COMPANY
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ARTICLES
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Breeding with Green Gene mutations
Helping Indian farmers through a dry spell
The Green Gene Revolution: tasty food, every day
We connect and accelerate
KeyGene, the Green Gene revolution goes America
Establishing genotype to phenotype relations: from art to science
KeyGene delivers sequence-based physical map of the tomato genome to CBSG and international SOL Consortium
It's a Green Gene Revolution: Keygene's 20th Anniversary
Dare to Share
Join us to make innovation work!
KeyGene InnovatorsClub members benefit from interaction
KeyBase™, a new mutagenesis technique
LEARN MORE
visit our website www.keygene.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Genomics in Business 2009 conference convened approximately 160 renowned industry leaders, visionaries and scientists, executives of cutting-edge companies and business analysts in Amsterdam to discuss about the latest innovations and commercial applications of Genomics in the Agro-Food sector.

With an Asian, USA and European perspective, new opportunities and challenges for the plant biotech industry were highlighted and discussed on topics like biofuels, nutritional food, health products, plant breeding, new sequencing and diagnostic technologies. In addition the participants exchanged business models and successful innovations to achieve strong market positions.

For more information on the conference and on the next edition in 2011 visit www.genomicsinbusiness2009.com
or contact info@iventus.nl.

KeyBase™
A new mutagenesis technique


August 2009

During the Genomics in Business 2009 conference in Amsterdam, KeyGene® announced its new technology: KeyBase™. KeyBase™ is an innovative method to achieve rapid and more precise plant breeding. The method enables the introduction of small desired alterations in the genetic material of plants, using a natural process. This KeyBase™ process can be compared with natural mutagenesis, with the difference that a single change is induced at one specific location on the DNA.

New technologies necessary for worldwide food production

The growing and aging world population, the exhaustion of natural resources and the consequences of climate change result in increasing food shortages and challenges for food production worldwide. It is necessary to significantly increase the production, quality and yield stability of food crops in a fast and sustainable manner. Future food production needs innovative techniques. KeyGene® is frontrunner in molecular breeding techniques.

How KeyBase™ works

KeyBase™ uses a sort of mould (made up of special chemically altered nucleotides) that searches for and alters a specific base in the DNA that one wishes to change. This mould is subsequently broken down and disappears from the cell.


KeyBase™: a natural process

The name KeyBase™ refers to a natural process that occurs in the cell, namely the continuous repair of damaged building blocks of DNA.
KeyBase™ makes use of this inherent plant cell repair system and can guide the change of a single base at just one position. The KeyBase™ process is comparable with natural mutagenesis, just like the creation of natural mutations, e.g. by UV light.

With KeyBase™ no recombination or shuffling of the genetic material occurs and no extra genetic material from a different source is added.
The advantage of KeyBase™ compared with natural mutagenesis is the targeting of a single gene.

 

 

Left: Wild type tobacco
Right: Herbicide resistant tobacco
(KeyBase™ mutation)

Classical plant breeding: indirect and time consuming

Mutagenesis has always been used for classical plant breeding in countries all over the world to produce improved plant varieties for the agricultural and horticultural markets. These methods use special chemicals to introduce changes in the genetic material of plants. This is very labor intensive and not only desired changes but also unintentional and undesirable alterations in the genetic material occur. Due to this, negative characteristics can be generated, necessitating an extensive crossing and selection procedure to generate the desired plant variety. Our new form of mutagenesis is more accurate, because only a single DNA nucleotide change is induced at one specific location in the DNA.
 

For more information, please contact: or in the U.S. and Canada:
Mark J.J. van Haaren
Vice-President, Business Development
E mark.van-haaren@keygene.com 
T +31 (0)317 466 866
An Michiels
Director, Keygene Inc.
E an.michiels@keygene-inc.com
T +1 240 205 7083
 

www.keygene.com


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