Micropeptides are natural molecules encoded in plant genomes. They are made of about 10 to 30 amino-acids, the natural building blocks of life. There are exactly 20 different natural amino-acids, which give about 10 trillion different combinations possible to make 10 amino-acids long peptides. 

Our platform leverages the power of computational biology and artificial intelligence to rapidly browse genomes and identify potential micropeptides sequence candidates. Our algorithms then help us select and prioritise candidates according to our predefined set of criteria. 

This enables us to narrow down the number of candidates from trillions to just a few hundred which are then screened in our internal efficacy assays.

Small 10 amino-acid long peptides are already widely used in pharmaceuticals or cosmetics. Companies usually rely on chemical synthesis for those applications, with hundreds of euros per gram on average. That may be fine for drugs or beauty creams, but not for farmers’ budgets. 

Our platform leverages the power of bioengineering to manufacture micropeptides at scale with a 100x improvement in cost compared to chemical synthesis. We start from the same bacterial production system already used to produce food-grade enzymes but adapted it to the specificities of small peptides. Our patented bioproduction system enables us to select the best micropeptide candidates based on their production yield potential. That’s how we select the ones that will be compatible with farmers’ budgets.

Micropeptides can be effective at 1/10th to 1/100th of the doses used with some conventional chemicals. But, each peptide molecule needs to overcome the multiple challenges that can occur between the production facility and the targeted plant cells. Each molecule needs to be stable enough to withstand storage conditions and exposure to other biological organisms and have good penetrability properties to rapidly reach its target once sprayed on leaves or put in soil. Being 10-20x smaller than regular proteins and RNA, micropeptides already have a natural advantage in terms of penetrability.
Our platform leverages analytical and formulation technologies to select micropeptide candidates with the best stability and penetrability properties and turn them into easy-to-use, reliable products that farmers can spray on their crops.