St. Louis, Missouri, USA
May 27, 2016

Monsanto and Harvard University recently announced the publication of favorable study data surrounding PACE (phage-assisted continuous evolution) technology and its potential to support the development of agriculture products that can help farmers control insects and pests that have developed resistance to prior agriculture solutions.

The application of PACE technology, invented by Dr. David Liu, Harvard professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, demonstrates that optimized proteins can be evolved up to 100 times faster than previous methods to convey specific benefits to plants or to target pests and pathogens in plants. This is important because farmers are continually challenged by the effects of a changing climate, increased insect pressure, insect resistance, disease and weed infestations.

A broad range of solutions is critical to help farmers manage these on-farm challenges in a sustainable way. The PACE collaboration is just one example of how researchers in academia and industry can pool their expertise to advance science in areas of mutual interest and speed the development of impactful technologies.

The study, “Continuous evolution of Bacillus thuringiensis toxins overcomes insect resistance” was published in the April 27, 2016 issue of Nature. Co-authors of the paper from Cornell contributed to the study, which is part of an ongoing collaboration between Monsanto and Harvard.

Website: http://www.monsanto.com

Published: May 27, 2016