Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s Reply, filed on 05/22/2026 electing Group I with traverse is hereby acknowledged. The traversal is on the grounds that Mora et al do not teach an epigenetically modified cassava plant comprising one or more targeted methylated sites in a methylation locus in a plant susceptibility gene.
The Examiner agrees and find this argument persuasive. Claims 60-62, 64-65 and 75-77 will be examined along with Group I claims.
Claims 52, 55-57, 60-65, 67-68, 70-71 and 75-77 are pending and examined herein on the merits.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
Claims 52, 57, 62, 67-68, 70-71 and 75-77 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claims contain subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
The claims are drawn to a disease-resistant epigenetically modified plant or plant cell comprising one or more targeted methylation sites in a methylation locus in any plant pathogen susceptibility gene or wherein the gene is a member of the elF4E gene family which represented numerous genes, or wherein the gene is MeSWEET10a or wherein the gene is nCBP-1 or nCBP-2. The claims are also drawn to methods of introducing expression constructs for methylation of a target nucleic acid of the claimed genes.
In contrast, the specification only describes very specific targeted modification of one or more cytosines within the TAL20 binding site in a promoter region of MeSWEET10a or one or more cytosines in promoter regions of nCBP-1 and nCBP-2 wherein resistance is conferred to Xanthomonas or cassava brown streak disease. The specification does not describe any other sites, any other genes or any other modifications that are epigenetic that result in the resistance of the plant or plant cell to a pathogen or any other pathogens.
Given the claim breadth and the lack of representative examples, and the lack of description of any other genes or sites within the genes, the claims as currently written lack adequate written description over their full breadth such that one of skill in the art would be able to determine whether or not they were in possession of the claimed invention.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 55-56 and 60-61 are objected to for depending from rejected claims but would be allowed if rewritten in independent form.
Claims 63 and 64-65 are allowed.
It is noted that the closest prior art Mora et al does in fact teach a disease resistant plant that comprises reduced expression in the MeSWEET10a susceptibility gene, wherein the product is very close to the instantly claimed product, however, Mora et al do not teach plants with epigenetically modified sequences wherein one or more cytosines within the targeted area are methylated wherein the expression is reduced wherein the plant is disease resistant. The plants would be structurally distinguishable from one another based on these differences. Furthermore, the prior art does not teach or reasonably suggest methods of epigenetically modifying said plants by methylating one or cytosines within the TAL binding domain, or within the promoters of the nCBP-1 or nCBP-2 genes as instantly claimed.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRENT T PAGE whose telephone number is (571)272-5914. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7-4 EST.
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/BRENT T PAGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1663
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