Celera Genomics Makes Advances

Applied Genetics News, April, 1999

Celera Genomics (Website: www.celera.com), a subsidiary of Perkin Elmer (761 Main Ave., Norwalk, CT 06859; Tel: 203/762-1000, Fax: 203/762-6000, Website: www.perkin-elmer.com), recently announced two new developments regarding its agricultural unit, Celera AgGen.

Celera AgGen has formed a three-year agreement with RhoBio S.A., a joint venture between Rhone Poulenc Agro and Biogemma, to use expression assays to discover genes critical to traits of importance in maize. Celera AgGen will receive royalties from RhoBio resulting from sales of any products resulting from this alliance. RhoBio will gain access to technology that can be used to benefit Genoplante, a plant genomics program in which it participates. In a separate development, AgGen has acquired 49% of the equity of Agrogen, an agricultural DNA testing laboratory in Moissy- Cramayel, France. The investment will allow AgGen to extend its automated sequencing and genotyping services to European agricultural markets. "We are excited about these developments," says J. Craig Ventner, president of Celera Genomics. "They are important steps in our strategy to provide gene expression profiling, gene discovery, and DNA sequencing services to the important field of agricultural genomics."