DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Restriction/Election
In response to the communication received on February 2nd, 2026, from Kirk Ekena, the election of Group I, claims 1-7, without traversal, is acknowledged.
Applicants have further provisionally elected the species of the FT10 gene from Group I. Upon further consideration and as a courtesy to the Applicant, the species FT4 and FT8 have been rejoined.
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed provisional application no. 63/268,572 filed February 25th, 2022 and 371 of PCT/US2023/063133 filed February 23rd, 2023 under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, 365(c), or 386(c) is acknowledged.
Thus, the earliest possible priority for the instant application is February 25th, 2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on December 31st, 2024 was considered, initialed, and attached hereto. A signed copy of the list of references cited is included with this Office Action.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-7, 9-15, 18-19, 20-22, and 24-25 filed April 18th, 2025 are pending.
Claims 9-15, 18-19, 21-22, and 24-25 are withdrawn.
Claims 1-7 are examined herein.
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because it contains an embedded hyperlink and/or other form of browser-executable code (see, for example, ¶60 and ¶93). Applicant is required to delete the embedded hyperlink and/or other form of browser-executable code; references to websites should be limited to the top-level domain name without any prefix such as http:// or other browser-executable code. See MPEP § 608.01.
Claim Objections
In claims 1-7, “FT4,” “FT8,” and “FT10” are used as abbreviation. It is suggested to insert a definition for FT4, FT8, and FT10 without bringing in new matter, immediately before the first appearance of “FT” in claim 1; and to enclose the appearance of “FT” in parentheses (in claim 1 only).
Claim 5 recites, “…the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant expresses a one or more…” It is suggested to remove “a” from the claim to improve the claim grammatically.
Claim Interpretation
In claim 1, and 2-7 depending therefrom, the recitation of “delayed flowering” is taken to mean suppression or delay of the ability of the plant to exhibit flowering as compared to a matching control plant [¶32]. Although the matching control plant is described merely as an example, “e.g., a similar plant having the wild-type flowering phenotype,” this is interpreted by the known meaning in the art. Merriam Webster defines a control as “one (such as an organism, culture, or group) that is part of a control experiment and is used as a standard of comparison.” Thus, delayed flowering is taken to mean suppression or delay of the ability of the plant to exhibit flowering as compared to a controlled standard of comparison, which would be the wild-type flowering phenotype with the same relevant features (in the same environment, plant species, at the same stage of growth etc.).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(b)
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 1, and 2-7 depending therefrom, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The recitation of “wherein the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant has decreased expression of the FT4, FT8, and FT10 gene” in claim 1, and 2-7 depending therefrom, is relative which renders the claim indefinite. Decreased expression of the FT4, FT8, and FT10 gene in comparison to what? In comparison to a wild-type sugarcane or energycane plant control or to another engineered plant? The recitation is indefinite without a comparison to ascertain the requisite degree of the relative decrease.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-2 and 5-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kardailsky, I. et al. “Flowering Inhibition,” US Patent Application Publication No. US 20070192904 A1, published 08/16/2007 (as cited in IDS filed 12/31/2024), in view of Venail, J. et al. (2021), “Analysis of the PEBP gene family and identification of a novel FLOWERING LOCUS T orthologue in sugarcane,” Journal of Experimental Botany, 73(7):2035-2049 (as cited in IDS filed 12/31/2024).
Claim 1 recites an engineered sugarcane or energycane plant having delayed flowering, wherein the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant has decreased expression of one or more of the FT4 gene, the FT8 gene, and the FT10 gene.
Claim 2 recites the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant of claim 1, wherein the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant has decreased expression of the FT4 gene, the FT8 gene, and the FT10 gene.
Claim 5 recites the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant of claim 1, wherein the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant expresses a one or more RNAi constructs targeting one or more of the FT4 gene, the FT8 gene, and the FT10 gene.
Claim 6 recites the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant of claim 5, wherein the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant expresses a single RNAi construct targeting one or more of the FT4 gene, the FT8 gene, and the FT10 gene.
Claim 7 recites the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant of claim 6, wherein the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant expresses a single RNAi construct targeting the FT4 gene, the FT8 gene, and the F T10 gene.
Kardailsky teaches the use of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) for modification of flowering, particularly flowering inhibition [Abstract]. Kardailsky teaches that flowering may be delayed by incorporating RNA interference (RNAi), an antisense nucleic acid or dsRNA or small interfering RNA (siRNA) (i.e. a plant having delayed flowering) [¶61 & 64]. Kardailsky teaches that the constructs and vectors of the invention may be incorporated into a variety of plants, including monocotyledons such as sugarcane (i.e. an engineered sugarcane plant) [¶55]. FT1, 2 and 3 were inactivated via RNAi in transgenics, TILLING, or identification and selective breeding to fix hypomorphic natural alleles in ryegrass (i.e. decreased expression of FT gene(s)) [¶83].
Kardailsky teaches RNAi constructs to inactivate the SVP gene and specifies that other RNAi-type constructs for the FT genes involved similar vector systems and experimental approach (i.e. plant expressing RNAi construct targeting FT gene(s)) [Fig. 6; ¶134]. Kardailsky teaches that the construct or vector may include one or more FT nucleic acids and that the nucleic acids within the same construct may have identical or differing sequences (i.e. a single construct targeting one or more FT genes) [¶48-49]. Kardailsky teaches that such system can be applied to any agricultural crop to facilitate more controlled production, and reduce dependence of yields on weather [¶66].
Kardailsky does not teach that the FT genes are the FT4, FT8, and/or FT10 genes of sugarcane or energycane. However, Venail teaches that six sugarcane FT-like genes, ScFT1-ScFT6, were previously identified (i.e. sugarcane FT4 gene) [pg. 0237, col. 1, ¶2]. Venail teaches novel sugarcane FT genes, ScFT7-13, ScMFT1, ScMFT2, and ScTFL2 from the Sugarcane Genome Hub database, Sucest-Fun database and from other RNA-seq experimental data (i.e. sugarcane FT8 and FT10).
To identify sugarcane homologues of known flowering-related genes, Blastx searches using the sugarcane transcriptome as queries were performed against a bait dataset of protein sequences from Arabidopsis thaliana, Sorghum bicolor, and Oryza sativa [pg. 2047, col. 2, ¶4]. ScFT8 and ScFT10 were identified and assigned its name to match the Sorghum homologue [pg. 2038, col. 1, ¶1]. Venail teaches that the FT-like genes show very high homology to their corresponding genes in Sorghum as expected, and also to other species, such as maize, rice, and Arabidopsis 2046, col. 2, ¶3]. Venail teaches that ScFT8 is phylogenetically grouped with sorghum SbFT8, which is able to induce flowering in the Arabidopsis ft-1 mutant [pg. 2043, col. 1, ¶2]. Venail teaches that ScFT10 shares a clade with ZCN8 from maize, which has been shown to have floral inducing activity in Arabidopsis, and SbFT10 in sorghum, which has been shown to induce flowering in the ft-1 mutant in Arabidopsis [pg. 2043, col. 1, ¶2]. Venail teaches that previously identified ScFT4 is in the same phylogenetic clade as the rice Hd3a gene and the sorghum SbFT1 gene, both of which have been shown to be floral activators [pg. 2043, col. 1, ¶1].
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify the engineered sugarcane plant of Kardailsky by decreasing expression of any of the ScFT4, ScFT8, or ScFT10 genes, as taught by Venail. One would have reasonable expectation of success in delaying flowering by specifically targeting any of these genes as they were known in the art and homologues of genes with similar functionality. One would have been motivated to do so as Kardailsky teaches that use of the FT genes allows for control over yield with less dependence on weather. As Kardailsky teaches RNAi constructs and teaches that a construct may include targeting more than one FT gene, this is taken to read on a single RNAi construct capable of targeting the three FT genes.
Claims 3 and 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kardailsky and Venail as applied to claims 1-2, and 5-7 above, and further in view of Brower-Toland, B. et al. “Compositions and Methods for Altering Flowering and Plant Architecture to Improve Yield Potential,” US Patent No. US 11555201 B2, filed 10/18/2017, published 01/17/2023 (as cited in IDS filed 12/31/2024 under US Patent Application Publication No. US 2018/0105819 Al).
Claim 3 recites the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant of claim 1, wherein the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant has loss of function mutation in the FT4 gene, the FT8 gene, and/or the F T10 gene.
Claim 4 recites the engineered sugarcane or energycane plant of claim 3, wherein the loss of function mutation is a CRISPR-induced loss of function mutation.
Kardailsky and Venail do not explicitly teach wherein the engineered sugarcane plant has loss of function mutation in the FT4, FT8, or FT10 gene or wherein the loss of function mutation is a CRISPR-induced loss of function mutation. However, Brower-Toland teaches constructs and vectors for attenuating and/or refining expression of a florigenic FT gene to produce an engineered plant [Abstract & ¶320]. Brower-Toland teaches that the FT transgene may comprise a target site for an endogenous RNA molecule that may target and trigger suppression of the FT transgene [¶49]. Suppression may include lowering, reducing, or eliminating expression levels of the mRNA and/or protein encoded by the target gene and/or transgene in a plant (i.e. loss of function mutation) [¶65]. Brower-Toland teaches that any method known in the art for site-directed integration may be used, such as RNA-guided nucleases [¶105]. Also provided are guide RNAs (e.g., CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs), trans-activating CRISPR RNAs (tracrRNAs), guide RNAs (gRNAs), single-guide RNAs (sgRNAs)) useful for methods of using RNA-guided nucleases. Brower-Toland teaches that site-specific insertion or integration of a transgene or construct may be achieved by site-directed integration of the insertion sequence into a plant genome to create the targeted insertion event at or near the site of the double strand break or nick (i.e. CRISPR-induced mutation). Brower-Toland teaches that transgenic plants of the invention may provide greater yield potential than wild type or control plants [Abstract].
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify the engineered sugarcane plant of Kardailsky by decreasing expression of any of the ScFT4, ScFT8, or ScFT10 genes, as taught by Venail, using the gene editing methodology of Brower-Toland. One would have reasonable expectation of success in targeting and decreasing any of these genes with CRISPR-induced loss of function mutation as the genes were known in the art as was the CRISPR mutation allowing for site-specific integration of a transgene or construct for gene suppression. One would have been motivated to do so as Kardailsky teaches that use of the FT genes, among other flowering-related genes, allows for control over yield with less dependence on weather, and Brower-Toland teaches that the suppression may provide greater yield potential.
Conclusion
No claims allowed.
Contact Information
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/EMILY K JOHNSON/Examiner, Art Unit 1662
/BRATISLAV STANKOVIC/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Units 1661 & 1662
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