SCIENCE@home

Extreme bioengineering to meet the nitrogen challenge

Stefan Burén,G. López-Torrejón,L. M. Rubio

Published 2018 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ABSTRACT

In the 1970s, investigators were already envisioning new technologies to generate crops that could utilize nitrogen (N2) from air to produce their own fixed N species, stating that “cereals that could provide their own fertilizer are beyond doubt the biggest prize of all in the gift of the new biology” (1). At this time, the N2-fixation genes ( nif ) of Klebsiella pneumoniae had just been transferred to Escherichia coli , making the naturally nonfixing bacterium capable of growing in the absence of combined N (2) and giving hope that this feature could also be carried over to more complex organisms. In PNAS, almost 50 years after the generation of the first N2-fixing E. coli , researchers from the Peking University, in collaboration with the lead author from that breakthrough study, present an ingenious approach to achieve coordinated and stoichiometric expression of nif genes in heterologous hosts (3). The method is based on regrouping genes of complex biological pathways into synthetic “giant genes,” products of which may be further processed into shorter functional proteins on demand. This technology will revolutionize our attempts to transfer the elaborate nif machinery into heterologous hosts, providing researchers with a groundbreaking advance to help generate plants capable of self-fertilization (4, 5). Successful transfer of nif genes into nonfixing organisms, such as plants, will depend on our ability to execute rational simplifications. Researchers must aim at finding the least possible complex, and most possible robust, genetic components capable of performing nitrogenase-related reactions in cellular environments different from their natural hosts. We must also identify intermediate steps of nitrogenase biosynthesis and develop methods for their analysis so that nitrogenase can be stepwise engineered—and functionally verified—before integration into a complete pathway. Once these objectives are achieved, synthetic biology, combined with increased knowledge of … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: lm.rubio{at}upm.es. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2018

  • Venue

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

  • Publication date

    2018-08-16

  • Fields of study

    Biology, Agricultural and Food Sciences, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science, Medicine

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.1073/pnas.1812247115PMID 30115666PMCID 6130396
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar, PubMed

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-24 of 24 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-22 of 22 citing papers · Page 1 of 1