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Biofortifying green optogenetics

Nature Plants volume 7, pages 104–105 (2021)Cite this article

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In plants, the absence of the retinal cofactor hinders the implementation of light-gated ion channels and optogenetic control of membrane potentials through rhodopsins. The engineering of β-carotene conversion into retinal now makes this powerful approach possible.

Engineering of light-sensitive proteins into synthetic, genetically encoded photoswitches enables the reversible and quantitative control of a wide range of cellular processes with the highest temporal and spatial resolution and minimal toxic effects1. Optogenetics has revolutionized prokaryotic, yeast and mammalian cell research within the past 15 years, particularly in neurobiology, and new developments appear at a rapid pace. In plants, however, it lags behind. Light needed by plants to grow and to make developmental decisions causes unintentional triggering of the optogenetic switches and constrains the potential of the technology. However, new tools have recently been developed to overcome these experimental limitations intrinsic to plant systems. BLINK, a blue-light-responsive ion channel, and PULSE, a blue- and red-light-controlled transcriptional switch, rely on synthetic approaches to optogenetically control K+ fluxes in the stomata and gene expression, respectively, in planta2,3.

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Fig. 1: Engineering of retinal production in plants facilitates optogenetic control of membrane depolarization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Synthetic Biology and CEPLAS, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Uriel Urquiza-Garcia & Matias D. Zurbriggen

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  1. Uriel Urquiza-Garcia
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  2. Matias D. Zurbriggen
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Correspondence to Matias D. Zurbriggen.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Urquiza-Garcia, U., Zurbriggen, M.D. Biofortifying green optogenetics. Nat. Plants 7, 104–105 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00860-x

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