Orion Genomics LLC announced today that it has successfully applied its GeneThresher(TM) technology to the corn genome. GeneThresher sequencing is a new gene discovery tool that enables the discovery of genes within a plant genome without sequencing the repetitive content. Dr. Robert A. Martienssen, a plant scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and a co-founder of Orion Genomics, discussed the methyl-filtration technology at the eighth annual Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, January 8-12.

"Our results indicate that GeneThresher technology will reduce the time and cost required to gain
a comprehensive analysis of the corn genome by more than 10-fold over existing methods,'' says
Dr. Richard K. Wilson, Orion Genomics' Chief Executive Officer.

Wilson says the secret behind the efficiency of GeneThresher technology is its ability to rapidly
identify and isolate only those eight percent of the corn genome's 2,600 megabases of DNA likely
to contain genes.

"By comparison with publicly available data for other plant species, we have demonstrated that
our GeneThresher database exclusively samples this gene-rich portion and not the repetitive
content,'' says Wilson. "Interestingly,'' he adds, "four out of every five corn genes that the
GeneThresher technology identified were not represented in the public corn expressed sequence
tag (''EST") database. Unlike ESTs, the GeneThresher technology sampled the entire structure of
the gene and examples of promoter regions were found within the Orion Genomics dataset,''
explains Wilson. "This has important implications for shedding new light on gene function and
manipulation.''

Dr. Jeff Bennetzen, professor of agronomy at Purdue University says, "These exciting results will
greatly accelerate both gene discovery and functional analysis of the corn genome, which has
seemed intractable until now.''

Wilson says Orion Genomics' corn gene discoveries further validate and enhance the initial findings of scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, which indicated that coding regions within the corn genome can be preferentially selected and sequenced.

"The genomes of many complex organisms -- particularly the major agricultural crop species --
represent enormous opportunities for product discovery,'' says Wilson.

"But many of these important genomes have been out of reach of even the largest product
discovery programs due to the enormous costs involved in 'whole genome' sequencing-searching
for a relatively small proportion of functional genes scattered among a large proportion of
repetitive, non-coding (or 'junk') DNA.''

Wilson says that the EST sequencing approach used by many companies avoids this non-coding
DNA, but suffers from other limitations. "Many potentially important genes are under-represented
or absent in the cDNA libraries used in EST approaches,'' notes Wilson. "Further, regulatory
regions are not represented at all.''

Recently, researchers at CSHL showed that the bulk of the repetitive, intergenic, non-coding
DNA in corn is methylated, and therefore distinguishable from genes. Dr. Robert A. Martienssen,
Dr. W. Richard M. McCombie and Dr. Pablo Rabinowicz are the CSHL scientists who invented
the GeneThresher technology. They have demonstrated that much of this methylated, non-coding
DNA can be eliminated by "filter cloning'' genomic libraries in a series of engineered bacterial
strains. These results were published in the November 1, 1999 issue of the journal Nature
Genetics.

Orion Genomics, LLC was founded in 1998 and holds the exclusive, worldwide commercial rights
to the GeneThresher technology. Orion Genomics engages in the discovery and development of
gene-based agricultural products, in collaboration with agricultural companies and in its own
proprietary programs. 

Company news release
N2417