US Patent Issued to Regents of the University of Minnesota on Sept. 16 for "Biocontainment/biocontrol system and methods" (American, Australian Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,416,011, issued on Sept. 16, was assigned to Regents of the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis).

"Biocontainment/biocontrol system and methods" was invented by Maciej Maselko (Sydney) and Mike Smanski (Falcon Heights, Minn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This disclosure describes, in one aspect, a cell that includes a biocontainment system. Generally, the biocontainment system includes a coding region whose overexpression decreases growth of the cell, a transcription regulatory region that includes a silent mutation and is operably linked upstream of the coding region, and a polynucleotide that encodes a programmable transcription act...