Wild Bio, a start-up using evolutionary biology to develop resilient crops, today announced that it is joining forces with leading scientists at the University of Oxford to develop a fundamentally new approach towards step-change crop improvement. The combined University of Oxford and Wild Bio team has been awarded multimillion pound financial backing from the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA), a new UK R&D funding agency sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, created to unlock technological breakthroughs for impact.
The collaboration, called OPTIMiSE (Oxford Plastid Transformation for an Improved Sustainable Economy), aims to deliver an integrated pathway for designing, building, testing, and delivering improved chloroplast (plastid) genomes to economically important crops.
Prof Steve Kelly, Oxford group leader & CSO at Wild Bio (Project Director), says “The chloroplast powers plant growth. It contains many important genes that plants use to harness sunlight and CO2 and channel them into growth. Until now, breeding to improve these critically important chloroplast genes has been almost impossible. The OPTIMiSE project has discovered a way to enable chloroplast breeding for the first time, and holds the potential to kickstart new era of sustainable crop improvement.”
This partnership between academic scientists and start-up innovators means that the Oxford team has the expertise to both generate scientific breakthroughs and to develop them through to real world products to maximise the impact of this ground-breaking crop improvement initiative.
Dr Samuel Gattis, CTO at Wild Bio, says “Wild Bio is thrilled to be a part of this project. Our track record in leveraging evolutionary biology to discover and deliver significant improvements to crops like wheat positions us perfectly to do the same with the untapped potential of chloroplast optimization.”
The OPTIMiSE collaboration is part of ARIA’s Synthetic Plants programme, led by Dr Angie Burnett, which aims to catalyse a new generation of major crops that are more productive, resilient, and sustainable.
Dr Ross Hendron, CEO of Wild Bio, says “We’re looking forward to collaborating with Oxford University and ARIA on this bold initiative. From GPS to the internet, the world has been profoundly shaped by breakthroughs from government-backed moonshot R&D. We’re proud to carry on that incredible tradition as we lead the development of next-generation crops for a changing planet.”