Abstract
Molecular genetic studies of model plants in the past few decades have identified many key genes and pathways controlling development, metabolism and environmental responses. Recent technological and informatics advances have led to unprecedented volumes of data that may uncover underlying principles of plants as biological systems. The newly emerged discipline of synthetic biology and related molecular engineering approaches is built on this strong foundation. Today, plant regulatory pathways can be reconstituted in heterologous organisms to identify and manipulate parameters influencing signalling outputs. Moreover, regulatory circuits that include receptors, ligands, signal transduction components, epigenetic machinery and molecular motors can be engineered and introduced into plants to create novel traits in a predictive manner. Here, we provide a brief history of plant synthetic biology and significant recent examples of this approach, focusing on how knowledge generated by the reference plant Arabidopsis thaliana has contributed to the rapid rise of this new discipline, and discuss potential future directions.
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Acknowledgements
We thank D. Wagner (Univ. Pennsylvania, USA) for sharing unpublished materials; S. Hagihara, M. Yoshimura and K. Itami (Institute of Transformative Biomolecules (ITbM), Nagoya Univ., Japan) for providing diagrams and unpublished Striga seedling images for Fig. 3; H. Hirukawa and S. Hagihara (ITbM) for the illustrations for Figs 1 and 3; and M. Maes (Univ. Washington, USA) for proofreading. Funding for synthetic biology research in J.L.N.'s laboratory is provided by the National Institute of Health (R01 GM107084) and the National Science Foundation (MCB-1411949). K.U.T. is an investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (HHMI-GBMF), and her group is supported by a grant (GBMF3035).
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Nemhauser, J., Torii, K. Plant synthetic biology for molecular engineering of signalling and development. Nature Plants 2, 16010 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.10
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