Yield10 Bioscience (formerly Metabolix, Inc.) is a company developing new technologies to achieve improvements in

crop yield In agriculture, the yield is a measurement of the amount of a crop grown, or product such as wool, meat or milk produced, per unit area of land. The seed ratio is another way of calculating yields. Innovations, such as the use of fertilizer, the c ...

to enhance global food security.

History

Founded in 1992, with the help of a licensing agreement with

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT), Metabolix, Inc. is a bioscience company with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Metabolix provides sustainable solutions to the plastic, chemical and energy industries. Oliver Peoples, Ph.D., and Anthony Sinskey, Ph.D., co-founded Metabolix after work at the (MIT) that identified the elementary methods and means for engineering

polyhydroxyalkanoates Polyhydroxyalkanoates or PHAs are polyesters produced in nature by numerous microorganisms, including through bacterial fermentation of sugars or lipids. When produced by bacteria they serve as both a source of energy and as a carbon store. M ...

production in plants and bacteria, thus making them biodegradable. In early 2017, Metabolix became Yield10 Bioscience, its crop research program.

Products

Crop technologies

The centerpiece of the Metabolix's plant technology is

polyhydroxybutyrate Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) is a polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a polymer belonging to the polyesters class that are of interest as bio-derived and biodegradable plastics. The poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (P3HB) form of PHB is probably the most common type ...

(PHB), the simplest member of the broad polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) family of biopolymers. They have worked with

switchgrass ''Panicum virgatum'', commonly known as switchgrass, is a perennial warm season bunchgrass native to North America, where it occurs naturally from 55°N latitude in Canada southwards into the United States and Mexico. Switchgrass is one of the ...

camelina ''Camelina'' is a genus within the flowering plant family Brassicaceae. The ''Camelina'' species, commonly known as false flax, are native to Mediterranean regions of Europe and Asia. Most species of this genus have been little studied, with the ...

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with ...

, as well as

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

. In 2009, Metabolix completed a field trial producing PHA in a tobacco crop. In 2012, Metabolix secured an

ARPA-E ARPA-E, or Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy is a United States government agency tasked with promoting and funding research and development of advanced energy technologies. It is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc ...

grant to improve productivity of biofuel production in plants, specifically camelina. In 2011, Metabolix was awarded a $6.0 million grant to produce PHB in switchgrass and to develop methods to thermally convert the PHB-containing switchgrass to crotonic acid and a higher density residual biomass fraction for production of biofuel. In 2017, Yield10 participated in a Department of Energy program to help boost Camelina oilseed.

Platforms

C3

C3 is the most common form of photosynthesis, existing in most crops suitable for human consumption, including wheat, canola, soybean and rice. In 2019 Yield10 announced results from its 2018 field test, claiming that its C3003 gene trait showed an 11% increase in seed yield among canola crops, when compared to control plants. Similarly, C3003 met its objectives for soybean yield, and showed an increase in Camelina.

C4

C4 photosynthesis plants, like corn and sugar cane, possess a more complex system of metabolic pathways.Novel Crop Traits
/ref> In 2018, Yield reported promising results for its C3004 gene trait in Camelina lines, following growth chamber studies.

CRISPR

Yield10 has also commenced development of CRISPR-enabled technology to impact crop yield. The company received a nonregulated status letter from the USDA-APHIS Biotechnology Regulatory Services (BRS) acknowledging that its camelina line has had a gene disrupted using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology, resulting in the desired phenotype.

PHA-based Biomaterials

In 2019, Yield10 filed a U.S. Patent application for new technology enabling low-cost production of PHA-based biomaterials, knowing for their use in water treatment to remove nitrogen and phosphates, to maintain the viability and vigor of Camelina seed.

Partnerships

In 2018, Yield10 was granted a non-exclusive research license to CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology by DowDuPont’s agricultural business, Corteva Agriscience, and the non-profit Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The Company also has established a partnership with University of Missouri, exercising an option with the University to obtain exclusive worldwide licenses to advanced technologies for oilseed crops. The relationship expanded in 2019 to include a new gene target. In 2018, Yield10 was granted a non-exclusive research license to Forage Genetics International, LLC, a subsidiary of Land O’Lakes, Inc., to conduct research with the novel traits within its forage sorghum development program as a strategy to improve biomass yields.