I-Corps: Controlling Protein Translation

I-Corps：控制蛋白质翻译

• 批准号: 1745595
• 负责人: Xinnian Dong
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-07-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1745595&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Controlling; Protein; Translation

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is revolutionizing how farmers grow their crops and significantly reduced the dependence on fertilizers or pesticides to maximize yields. Understanding how to manipulate natural components of the plant stress response to provide desirable beneficial traits will potentially lead to reductions in chemical use in agriculture. This technology provides a novel mechanism to express broad spectrum immune response that would normally stunt plant growth. This novel mechanism has large potential societal and commercial impacts. Currently, agricultural companies express resistance genes using promoter systems that are specific for one strain of pathogen. Each resistance gene included in the plant seed results in a negative fitness cost. The technology developed here can potentially eliminate the need to express multiple resistance genes by replacing them with one broad spectrum resistance gene.This I-Corps project further develops a TBF1-Control Cassette technology (TCC) to regulate translation that is both inducible and specific. Current gene expression methods are primarily based on transcriptional regulation utilizing synthetic or native promoters, which were shown to be insufficient in overcoming negative fitness costs associated with expression of stress response genes. The TCC technology remediates these negative fitness cost by "stalling" the translation of the gene of interest until a trigger is present. This mechanism allows for the accumulation of transcripts without the subsequent translation, and hence no negative fitness costs until the protein is translated. The technology was proven to work in rice and can be applied to other economically important crops, such as wheat or corn.

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力正在彻底改变农民种植作物的方式，并大大减少了对化肥或杀虫剂的依赖，以最大限度地提高产量。了解如何操纵植物应激反应的天然成分以提供理想的有益性状将可能导致减少农业中的化学品使用。 这项技术提供了一种新的机制，表达广谱免疫反应，通常会阻碍植物生长。这种新机制具有巨大的潜在社会和商业影响。目前，农业公司使用对一种病原体菌株具有特异性的启动子系统来表达抗性基因。植物种子中包含的每个抗性基因导致负的适合度成本。这里开发的技术可以通过用一个广谱抗性基因取代多个抗性基因来潜在地消除表达多个抗性基因的需要。这个I-Corps项目进一步开发了TBF 1-Control Cassette技术（TCC），以调节既可诱导又特异的翻译。目前的基因表达方法主要是基于利用合成或天然启动子的转录调控，这被证明不足以克服与应激反应基因表达相关的负适应性成本。TCC技术通过“拖延”感兴趣的基因的翻译直到存在触发物来补救这些负适应度成本。这种机制允许转录本的积累而不需要随后的翻译，因此在蛋白质被翻译之前没有负适应性成本。该技术已被证明适用于水稻，并可应用于其他重要的经济作物，如小麦或玉米。