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      Key Applications of Plant Metabolic Engineering

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          Abstract

          Elizabeth Sattely, Anne Osbourn, and colleagues discuss in this Essay four long-standing challenges in plant metabolic engineering: to create plants that provide their own nitrogen, have improved nutrient content, function better as biofuels, and have increased photosynthetic efficiency.

          Abstract

          Great strides have been made in plant metabolic engineering over the last two decades, with notable success stories including Golden rice. Here, we discuss the field's progress in addressing four long-standing challenges: creating plants that satisfy their own nitrogen requirement, so reducing or eliminating the need for nitrogen fertilizer; enhancing the nutrient content of crop plants; engineering biofuel feed stocks that harbor easy-to-access fermentable saccharides by incorporating self-destructing lignin; and increasing photosynthetic efficiency. We also look to the future at emerging areas of research in this field.

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          Multiplex and homologous recombination-mediated genome editing in Arabidopsis and Nicotiana benthamiana using guide RNA and Cas9.

          Jian-Feng Li, Julie E. Norville, John Aach … (2013)
          Article 0 comments Cited 524 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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            Pivoting the plant immune system from dissection to deployment.

            Jeffery Dangl, Diana Horvath, Brian J. Staskawicz (2013)
            Diverse and rapidly evolving pathogens cause plant diseases and epidemics that threaten crop yield and food security around the world. Research over the last 25 years has led to an increasingly clear conceptual understanding of the molecular components of the plant immune system. Combined with ever-cheaper DNA-sequencing technology and the rich diversity of germ plasm manipulated for over a century by plant breeders, we now have the means to begin development of durable (long-lasting) disease resistance beyond the limits imposed by conventional breeding and in a manner that will replace costly and unsustainable chemical controls.
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              Pathways for degradation of lignin in bacteria and fungi.

              Timothy Bugg, Mark Ahmad, Elizabeth Hardiman … (2011)
              Lignin is a heterogeneous aromatic polymer found as 10-35% of lignocellulose, found in plant cell walls. The bio-conversion of plant lignocellulose to glucose is an important part of second generation biofuel production, but the resistance of lignin to breakdown is a major obstacle in this process, hence there is considerable interest in the microbial breakdown of lignin. White-rot fungi are known to break down lignin with the aid of extracellular peroxidase and laccase enzymes. There are also reports of bacteria that can degrade lignin, and recent work indicates that bacterial lignin breakdown may be more significant than previously thought. The review will discuss the enzymes for lignin breakdown in fungi and bacteria, and the catabolic pathways for breakdown of the β-aryl ether, biphenyl and other components of lignin in bacteria and fungi. The review will also discuss small molecule phenolic breakdown products from lignin that have been identified from lignin-degrading microbes, and includes a bioinformatic analysis of the occurrence of known lignin-degradation pathways in Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Sophien Kamoun: Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS Biol
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS Biol
                Journal ID (publisher-id): plos
                Journal ID (pmc): plosbiol
                Title: PLoS Biology
                Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                ISSN (Print): 1544-9173
                ISSN (Electronic): 1545-7885
                Publication date Collection: June 2014
                Publication date (Electronic): 10 June 2014
                Volume: 12
                Issue: 6
                Electronic Location Identifier: e1001879
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America
                [2 ]Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
                [3 ]Department of Metabolic Biology, John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich United Kingdom
                The Sainsbury Laboratory, United Kingdom
                Author notes

                The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Article
                Publisher ID: PBIOLOGY-D-14-00804
                DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001879
                PMC ID: 4051588
                PubMed ID: 24915445
                SO-VID: a536cf7a-9765-4527-b2ee-8bc2f59ba248
                Copyright statement: Copyright @ 2014
                License:

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                Page count
                Pages: 5
                Funding
                ESS is supported by NIH grants GM089985 and OD007290 and by startup funds from Stanford University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Subject: Essay
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Biochemistry
                Subject: Plant Biochemistry
                Subject: Photosynthesis
                Subject: Phytochemicals
                Subject: Plant Energy Production
                Subject: Biotechnology
                Subject: Bioengineering
                Subject: Biological Systems Engineering
                Subject: Plant Biotechnology
                Subject: Small Molecules
                Subject: Nutrition
                Subject: Diet
                Subject: Plant Science
                Subject: Engineering and Technology
                Subject: Chemical Engineering

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Life sciences
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Life sciences

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