Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for the agriculture sector. As there are a lot of startups working on various different applications, we want to share our insights with you. Today, we take a look at promising bioinformatics startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top Bioinformatics Startups
For our 5 top picks, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 4 interesting examples out of 160 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.
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Biome Makers – Soil Microbiome
Wines differ greatly in taste not just because of the grapes they are made of, but also because of where these grapes are grown. The microbes that reside in soil influence its characteristics and, subsequently, the crops that are grown on it. Microbiome analysis of the soil helps growers make decisions about which cultivars to grow on their lands – ultimately yielding better returns.
Biome Makers is a US-based startup that uses bioinformatics and data intelligence to provide recommendations for better agricultural production. For wineries, they analyze soil samples to screen for microbes that may negatively affect the quality of the wine produced. They do this thanks to their database of soil microbe genomes, which only gets larger as more customers send in their samples.
Nextbiotics – Animal Feed
The use of antibiotics in animal feed has led to massive gains in swine, poultry, and cattle meat over the last few decades. However, the rise in antibiotic resistance puts both animal and human health at risk from resistant bacteria. Advancements in bioinformatics allow engineering viruses and turn them into an alternative to antibiotics.
The US-based startup Nextbiotics develops alternatives for antibiotics used in animal feed. It combines bioinformatics algorithms, directed evolution, and gene editing to develop stable and efficient bacteriophages. These kill pathogenic bacteria, improve animal health, and do not affect human health.
Bioverse Labs – Precision Agriculture
Crops, even those grown in monocultures, encounter pests and invasive species. An outbreak of either of the two wreaks havoc on crops on a massive scale. Precision agriculture aims to minimize these detrimental interactions. Bioinformatics used in conjunction with imaging and data analytics addresses this issue.
Bioverse Labs, based in the United States, develops solutions to automate species monitoring for precision agriculture and human health applications. They use their proprietary Internet of things (IoT) sensor and multi-scale bioinformatics to classify and discover both pest and beneficial species. With cloud-based predictive analytics, they monitor the population dynamics of any species and prevent pest outbreaks.
Agrematch – Crop Protection
Agricultural pests destroy a large portion of the crops grown. Pesticide use fails to sustainably address the issue and leads to more problems. Chemical pesticides pollute the soil and water and pests are increasingly becoming resistant to them. Small, biological molecules protect crops without the undesirable effects of chemical insecticides and fungicides. Bioinformatics speeds up small molecules discovery and helps to bring them to market faster.
The Israel-based startup Agrematch uses big data and bioinformatics to analyze complex scientific data and suggests molecules that may be useful in crop protection. Their proprietary algorithm is known as agresense and it finds promising molecules for host-pathogen interactions that are then tested for efficacy in the lab.
CloudSeq – Next-Generation Sequencing
Costs and run times of DNA sequencing have fallen by orders of magnitude over the past decade. At this point, management and analysis of huge amounts of sequencing data are more crucial than generating it. As increasingly more crop genomes are sequenced, next-generation sequencing (NGS) opens up possibilities for high-precision molecular breeding.
The Singaporean startup CloudSeq develops a one-stop solution for all next-generation sequencing needs. For their AgTech customers, they provide services in molecular marker analysis, novel variant detection, and breeding value estimation. They also offer automated NGS solutions or custom analyses on sequencers from Illumina and Pacific Biosciences.
What About The Other 155 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence for your Proof of Concept (PoC), partnership, or investment targets. The 5 bioinformatics startups showcased above are promising examples out of 160 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria and collaboration strategy, get in touch.
