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.

满足未来全球粮食需求需要采用新方法来培育能够应对气候变化的高产作物。合成和工程生物学方法具有应对这一挑战的巨大潜力。提高水稻和小麦等全球主要作物的产量和恢复能力的一个重要机会在于增强它们吸收二氧化碳的能力，植物可以利用二氧化碳来制造糖和淀粉以促进生长。我们建议通过赋予作物一种称为类核的特殊细胞区室来增强作物中的二氧化碳同化，这种特殊的细胞区室在真核藻类和一些低地植物中自然进化，但在作物中不存在。在这里，作为实现这一目标的关键一步，我们将增进对类核蛋白组装和结构原理的基本理解，并将利用这种理解在陆地植物模型拟南芥中构建功能性的基于合成核蛋白的二氧化碳浓缩机制。该项目有三个目标，每个目标都结合了基于湿实验室的试管中合成蛋白核的实验和基于模型的补充分析，以推动植物的工程工作。该项目建立在一个杰出的国际团队的综合成果的基础上，该团队在推进类核生物学知识和将藻类成分工程化到陆地植物中的能力方面拥有良好的合作记录。该合作此前已识别和表征了关键的蛋白核成分，收集了关于蛋白核如何组装的基本见解，生成了第一个计算模型来描述基于功能性蛋白核的二氧化碳浓缩机制如何工作，并在拟南芥中成功组装了蛋白核原型。该项目将利用这些知识，使我们对具有生态和生物地球化学重要性的藻类机制的基本理解发生重大变化，并将显着提高我们设计改善植物生长的能力。