Professor Saul Purton (UCL Structural & Molecular Biology) and Dr Scott Lenaghan (University of Tennessee) are co-leading a project, supported by an £8.9 million grant, that aims to harness the power of organisms that capture energy from sunlight (photosynthesis) - both land plants and algae - for the sustainable, affordable, and accessible production of valuable compounds for healthcare and manufacturing.
The researchers will do this in three parts: first, by developing a new method for introducing a set of synthetic genetic instructions that can add beneficial traits into major crop plants, starting with the potato. Second, they’ll advance our ability to engineer chloroplasts - parts of the cell which capture sunlight for energy production - by developing methods that allow the delivery and proper functioning of complex traits. Third, they’ll build new tools that can work in multiple types of plants, allowing this approach to be applied to a range of societally important crops. Ultimately, their vision is to use a wide range of photosynthetic organisms to make biopharmaceuticals, biopolymers and other bio-products.
Professor Purton commented: "This is a highly ambitious project with the goal of creating next-generation crop plants with valuable new traits.
"Working with a consortium of synthetic biologists and bioinformaticians from the UK, USA and Germany, we aim to develop advanced techniques that allow the redesign and expansion of the tiny genetic system of the plant chloroplast. This will make possible the production of enhanced crops able to fix their own nitrogen, produce important nutrients such as vitamin B12, or serve as light-driven factories for biopharmaceuticals and other bio-products."
The project, entitled ’Creating a programmable, synthetic plastid genome: Synplastome 2.0’ involves researchers at UCL, University of Tennessee, University of Cambridge, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, Quadram Institute, Bright Biotech Ltd, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Holzer Scientific Consulting.
The project forms part of ARIA’s Synthetic Plants foundational research programme that is laying the foundations for more productive, resilient, and sustainable plants, backed by £62.4 million of newly announced funding. Professor Purton’s group and eight other interdisciplinary research teams are devising ways to equip plants with improved traits and characteristics such as enhanced photosynthesis, disease resistance, and higher yield.
As the world’s growing population is projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, agricultural production will need to increase by approximately 70%. To help achieve this, the programme will explore the fundamental scientific and technical approaches required to support long-term innovation and growth in a sector that accounts for 4% of global GDP. The programme is focused on creating systems that allow scientists to safely design, build, and deliver genetic instructions into plant chloroplasts and chromosomes.
- University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT (0) 20 7679 2000
Chris Lane
/ +44 (0) 7717 728648E: chris.lane [at] ucl.ac.uk
