Innovative use of molecular design technology is essential for discovering and developing new agricultural products at a faster pace. Today, TeselaGen Biotechnology Inc., and Dow AgroSciences, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW), announced they have entered a new phase in their collaboration to produce a state-of-the-art biological design automation platform that can speed discovery work. The companies began collaborating in 2016.
The current collaboration yielded significant results with a new design platform, which has helped scientists increase the flow of potential discovery leads tenfold. The new phase of the collaboration builds on this order of magnitude increase in research productivity and extends the platform with a powerful software module for industrial-scale cloning. In building a flexible modular platform and not a custom solution, the companies are rigorous about building software modules that adhere to a strict design-build-test methodology with a strong emphasis on repeatability and architecture suitable for machine learning.
“Implementing a secure computational environment to design and create molecular biology research information will accelerate our scientists’ efforts to find new crop protection and seed products for farmers around the world,” said Otto Folkerts, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Dow AgroSciences.
“TeselaGen is building a platform that automates and optimizes protocol generation and information flow for biomanufacturing. Our hypothesis is that biotechnology is essentially an information technology. Improving the flow, handling and interpretation of information is a tremendous accelerant for biotech product development,” said Dr. Michael Fero, Chief Executive Officer, TeselaGen.
Terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.