22BBSRC-NSF/BIO: A synthetic pyrenoid to guide the engineering of enhanced crops

22BBSRC-NSF/BIO：指导改良作物工程的合成核糖体

• 批准号: BB/Y000323/1
• 负责人: Alistair McCormick
• 金额: $ 51.65万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FY000323%2F1
• 关键词: 22BBSRC; NSF; BIO; synthetic; pyrenoid

Meeting future global food demands will require novel approaches for creating higher-yielding crops that are robust in the face of climate change. Synthetic and engineering biology approaches have huge potential to deliver on this challenge. A major opportunity for increasing the yields and resilience of major global crops such as rice and wheat lies in enhancing their ability to assimilate CO2, from which plants make sugars and starch for growth. We propose to enhance CO2 assimilation in crops by endowing them with a specialised cellular compartment called the pyrenoid that has naturally evolved in eukaryotic algae and some lower land plants but is not present in crops. Here, as a key step towards this goal, we will advance our basic understanding of the principles that underlie the assembly and architecture of pyrenoids and will leverage this understanding to build a functional synthetic pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanism into the model land plant Arabidopsis. The project has three aims, each of which combines wet-lab based experimentation on synthetic pyrenoids in test tubes and complementary model-based analyses to push forward the engineering efforts in plants. The project builds on the combined outputs of an outstanding international team with a strong track record of collaboration in advancing both the knowledge of pyrenoid biology and the ability to engineer algal components into land plants. The collaboration has previously identified and characterised key pyrenoid components, gleaned fundamental insights into how the pyrenoid is assembled, generated the first computational model to describe how a functional pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanism works, and successfully assembled a prototype pyrenoid in Arabidopsis. This project will leverage this knowledge to generate a step-change in our basic understanding of an algal mechanism that is of ecological and biogeochemical importance and will significantly advance our ability to engineer improved plant growth.

满足未来的全球粮食需求将需要新颖的方法来创造面对气候变化的较高的农作物。合成和工程生物学方法具有巨大的潜力来解决这一挑战。增加全球主要农作物（例如大米和小麦）的产量和韧性的主要机会在于增强其吸收二氧化碳的能力，植物从中糖和淀粉以供生长。我们建议通过赋予在真核藻类和某些下部陆地植物中自然进化的专门的细胞室，从而增强农作物中的二氧化碳同化，但在农作物中不存在。在这里，作为朝着这一目标的关键一步，我们将提高对构根原理的基本理解，这些原则是构成类胞素的组装和结构，并将利用这种理解来建立一个基于功能性合成的pyrentoid co2浓缩机制，以纳入模型植物植物植物拟南芥。该项目具有三个目标，每个目标都结合了基于湿lab的测试管中的合成类球的实验和基于互补的模型分析，以推动植物的工程工作。该项目建立在一支杰出的国际团队的合并成果的基础上，其协作方面具有良好的记录，以促进类似力的生物学知识和将藻类组件设计到陆地植物中的能力。该合作以前已经确定并表征了关键的类拟南芥成分，收集的基本见解是如何组装好的，这是第一个描述基于功能性的二氧化碳的浓缩机制的第一个计算模型，并成功地组装了拟南芥中的原型Pyrenoid。该项目将利用这一知识来产生我们对藻类机制的基本理解，该机制具有生态和生物地球化学的重要性，并将大大提高我们设计改善植物生长的能力。