REHOVOT — The Iowa State University Research Foundation (ISURF) and Rosetta Green, Ltd., a Rehovot, Israel-based agricultural biotechnology company, last week signed a licensing agreement to develop plant resistance to cyst nematodes (SCN), which create an estimated $1 billion loss to U.S. soybean producers each year.

“This is another significant milestone for the company in entering the plant disease world,” said Amir Avniel, Rosetta Green CEO.

“Nematode worms are an increasing worldwide problem due to the lack of measures against this pest.”

The Aug. 14 agreement is based on ISU’s research in “deciphering how plant-parasitic microscopic roundworms (cyst nematodes) infect plants,” ISU researchers said.

Under the agreement, Rosetta Green will use its unique research technology to introduce the licensed microRNA gene in plants, which ISU scientists discovered can be used to produce nematode-resistant plants.

As the international pioneer and leader in plant microRNA research, Rosetta Green said it can advance these results and develop improved plants, “which will contain the relevant gene and be resistant to nematodes.”

“We see once again the potential of microRNA genes to improve plant traits,” Avniel added. “We believe that the technology developed by Iowa State University, together with the technology developed by Rosetta Green related to these special genes, creates a tremendous value and brings the technology closer to the market.”

In July, Rosetta Green and KWS, an Einbeck, Germany-based plant breeding company, signed a licensing agreement for a joint project in the discovery and characterization of microRNA genes to improve sugar beets.

Last December, Rosetta Green and DuPont signed a strategic research agreement to identify drought tolerance genes in corn and soybeans.

Funded by the Iowa Soybean Assoc. (ISA), ISURF’s and Rosetta Green’s research led to the discovery, cited in a journal article in Plant Physiology. The ISA invests more than $3 million per year of soybean checkoff dollars on soybean research at ISU.

The ISURF, the licensing arm of ISU, which is one of the world’s leading universities in plant research, is seeking patent protection for the research.

Recently, the National Science Foundation funded a three-year study for $607,875 to continue work with Arabidopsis microRNAs – which are frequently used as a model plant because of its relatively small genome – during cyst nematode parasitism.

“Cyst nematodes have learned to communicate with plant cells in a very subtle way,” said Thomas Baum, chair of ISU’s Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, who has been working with ISU associate scientist Tarek Hewezi on the SCN research.

According to Baum and Hewezi, cyst nematodes are parasites that feed on plant cells by penetrating the host plant’s roots, forming a shell-like cyst as they attach themselves to the roots, which contain hundreds of eggs.

While there are several types of cyst nematodes, the SCN in Iowa has been found in the soil of fields in each of the 99 counties and “their cysts persist in the soil,” the researchers said.

Considered to be the most serious pathogenic threat to soybeans and yield, the SCN is estimated to reduce returns to U.S. soybean producers by $1 billion annually.

Baum said they “sought to understand how the nematode changes the plant’s gene activities for the purpose of turning it into a food source, focusing on microRNAs,” which are “powerful regulators of gene activity.”

“DNA by itself doesn’t do anything until you have regulatory mechanisms that activate the genes found in it,” he said.

“MicroRNAs are molecules that suppress, or negatively regulate, how strongly their target genes are activated,” he added. “So, high microRNA concentrations result in low target gene activity and vice versa.”

Baum, a world-renowned SCN researcher whose ISU laboratory discovered the ability of microRNA genes to fight nematodes, said “the scientific discovery that microRNA genes can improve the plants’ resistance to nematodes is a breakthrough.”

“Using microRNA genes in plants has the potential to increase yield and to provide an effective management tool against nematodes,” he said. “This is the first time in the world that microRNAs have been proven as an effective tool to fight nematodes.

“I have high hopes that joint research between Iowa State University and Rosetta Green will succeed in developing plants resistant to nematodes.”