The Plant Journal最新文献

Plant transformation is an important part of plant research and crop improvement. Transformation methods remain complex, labor intensive, and inefficient. PlantGENE is a community of scientists from academia, industry, non-profit research institutes, and government organizations working to improve plant transformation. PlantGENE hosts virtual training, interactive webinars, and a website with career opportunities, directories, and more. The plant science community has shown great interest and support for PlantGENE.

There is a need for ground-breaking technologies to boost crop yield, both grains and biomass, and their processing into economically competitive materials. Novel cereals with enhanced photosynthesis and assimilation of greenhouse gasses, such as carbon dioxide and ozone, and tailored straw suitable for industrial manufacturing, open a new perspective for the circular economy. Here we describe the vision, strategies, and objectives of BEST-CROP, a Horizon-Europe and United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded project that relies on an alliance of academic plant scientists teaming up with plant breeding companies and straw processing companies to use the major advances in photosynthetic knowledge to improve barley biomass and to exploit the variability of barley straw quality and composition. We adopt the most promising strategies to improve the photosynthetic properties and ozone assimilation capacity of barley: (i) tuning leaf chlorophyll content and modifying canopy architecture; (ii) increasing the kinetics of photosynthetic responses to changes in irradiance; (iii) introducing photorespiration bypasses; (iv) modulating stomatal opening, thus increasing the rate of carbon dioxide fixation and ozone assimilation. We expect that by improving our targeted traits we will achieve increases in aboveground total biomass production without modification of the harvest index, with added benefits in sustainability via better resource-use efficiency of water and nitrogen. In parallel, the resulting barley straw is tailored to: (i) increase straw protein content to make it suitable for the development of alternative biolubricants and feed sources; (ii) control cellulose/lignin contents and lignin properties to develop straw-based construction panels and polymer composites. Overall, by exploiting natural- and induced-genetic variability as well as gene editing and transgenic engineering, BEST-CROP will lead to multi-purpose next generation barley cultivars supporting sustainable agriculture and capable of straw-based applications.

Biophotovoltaics offers a promising low-carbon footprint approach to utilize solar energy. It aims to couple natural oxygenic photosynthetic electrons to an external electron sink. This lays the foundation for a potentially high light-to-energy efficiency of the Biophotovoltaic process. However, there are still uncertainties around demonstrating the direct coupling of electron fluxes between photosystems and the external electrode. The dynamic cellular electron transfer network linked to physiological and environmental parameters poses a particular challenge here. In this work, the active cellular electron transfer network was modulated by tuning the cultivating conditions of Synechocystis and the operating conditions in Biophotovoltaics. The current output during darkness was found to be determined by the intracellular glycogen levels. Minimizing the intracellular glycogen pools also eliminated the dark-current output. Moreover, our results provide strong evidence that water splitting in photosystem II is the electron source enabling photocurrent, bypassing the microbe's metabolism. Eliminating the storage carbon as possible source of electrons did not reduce the specific photocurrent output, indicating an efficient coupling of photosynthetic electron flux to the anode. Furthermore, inhibiting respiration on the one hand increased the photocurrent and on the other hand showed a negative effect on the dark-current output. This suggested a switchable role of the respiratory electron transfer chain in the extracellular electron transfer pathway. Overall, we conclude that Synechocystis dynamically switches electron sources and utilizes different extracellular transfer pathways for the current output toward the external electron sink, depending on the physiological and environmental conditions.

Microalgae possess diverse lipid classes as components of structural membranes and have adopted various lipid remodeling strategies involving phospholipids to cope with a phosphorus (P)-limited environment. Here, we report a unique adaptative strategy to P deficient conditions in two cold-adapted microalgae, Raphidonema monicae and Raphidonema nivale, involving the lipid class diacylglyceryl glucuronide (DGGA) and the betaine lipid diacylglyceryl-N,N,N-trimethylhomoserine. Lipidomic analyses showed that these two lipid classes were present only in trace amounts in nutrient replete conditions, whereas they significantly increased under P-starvation concomitant with a reduction in phospholipids, suggesting a physiological significance of these lipid classes to combat P-starvation. Additionally, we found two putative sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerol (SQDG) synthases, known to be involved in DGGA synthesis in higher plants, in the draft genome of R. monicae, and compared it with SQDG synthases found in other organisms such as higher plants, Streptophyta, and Chlorophyta. DGGA has not been previously recognized in Chlorophyta, and our findings suggest that the lipid class may be present in other closely related green algae too. Thus, this study expands our knowledge on diverse lipid remodeling responses of Chlorophycean algae to adapt to low P environments.