Synthetic Sensing and Signal Transduction: Designing Novel Traits In Plants

The emerging field of synthetic biology has been making significant progress towards engineering more complex genetic circuits that enable novel functions in unicellular organisms, such as bacteria and yeast. However, the transition to higher multicellular organisms presents several challenges, among them the presence of diverse organs and tissues, as well as more complex signaling and gene regulation mechanisms. I will describe our efforts to engineer sensor plants, from the use of computationally re-designed proteins to sense a substance of interest in the apoplast, to the development of a complete synthetic signal transduction pathway that results in regulation of gene expression in the cell nucleus. This synthetic system takes advantage of conservation of signaling mechanisms between bacteria and plants. Recent improvements to this system will also be described.  Our system is modular, allowing the sensing and response modules to be interchanged and tailored for specific applications.  Hence, this technology can be applied for basic research studies, as well as for more practical purposes, such as national security, environmental monitoring and bioremediation, and production of valuable compounds.