Photoreceptor Engineering to Modulate Plant Growth

光对协调植物生长发育至关重要。特别是蓝光（320-500 nm）可以调节促进生长的一系列反应。这些过程包括叶绿体重新定位运动、叶片定位和扩张、气孔打开和向光性，所有这些过程都通过提高光捕获效率、减少光损伤和调节叶片与大气之间的气体交换来影响植物的光合能力。总的来说，这些反应对植物生长产生了巨大的影响，并由趋光素蓝光受体控制。因此，操纵促光素受体活性提供了额外的机会，以提高光合性能和促进特定光条件下的生长。事实上，我们最近的研究结果证明了通过改变促光素反应性来改变植物生长的潜力。因此，这项工作的一个主要成果将是建立一个结构和功能蓝图，用于构建工程光感受器，以优化特定光照条件下的光合生产力。因此，这一建议提供了一种额外的方法来协调逐步增强光合作用性能，以提高产量，最终为更有效地种植作物提供新的策略。本提案中概述的工作还将产生具有定制光化学特性的新光感受器组件，这些组件将在合成基于蛋白质的开关中发挥作用，这些开关旨在通过光调节目标细胞的活动。

Light is critical for coordinating plant growth and development. Blue light (320-500 nm) in particular acts to regulate a wide range of responses that serve to promote growth. These processes include chloroplast relocation movements, leaf positioning and expansion, stomatal opening and phototropism, all of which influence a plant's photosynthetic competence by improving efficiency of light capture, reducing photodamage, and regulating gas exchange between leaves and the atmosphere. Collectively, these responses elicit dramatic effects on plant growth and are controlled by phototropin blue-light receptors. Therefore, manipulation of phototropin receptor activity offers additional opportunities to increase photosynthetic performance and promote growth under specific light conditions. Indeed, our recent results demonstrate the potential to alter plant growth through changes in phototropin reactivity. Hence, a major outcome of this work will be to establish a structural and functional blueprint for constructing engineered photoreceptors directed at optimising photosynthetic productivity under specific light conditions. This proposal therefore offers an additional approach to coordinate stepwise enhancements in photosynthetic performance with an aim to increasing yield that should ultimately offer new strategies to grow crops more efficiently. The work outlined in this proposal will also generate new photoreceptor components with tailored photochemical properties that will have utility in generating synthetic protein-based switches designed to regulate target cellular activities by light.