Metabolix might be out of the PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate) business now but we will still monitor this company from time to time as it expands its agbiotech business (and hopefully future feedstock for chemical application).

This news announced the partnership of Metabolix and North Carolina State University for a worldwide, exclusive license agreement in advanced crop science technology used to improve crop yield. This technology was developed by Dr. Heike Sederoff, Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and colleagues at NC State. This license will expand the intellectual property portfolio being assembled by Yield10 Bioscience, the crop science venture launched by Metabolix in 2015. Yield10 is focused on developing proprietary, breakthrough technologies to create step-changes in yield for major food and feed crops to enhance global food security.

The technology developed by Dr. Sederoff and her team at NC State reportedly holds significant promise for developing new yield traits based on advanced metabolic engineering methods to improve carbon capture and selectively control carbon partitioning in plants. Work on these yield traits has already been done using camelina, a model system for oilseed crops such as canola and soybean.