21EBTA Engineering specialised metabolism and new cellular architectures in plants

植物具有丰富的内源新陈代谢，可以通过基因转化重新编程。瞬时表达技术使它们成为低成本、高产量生产疫苗、治疗性蛋白质和代谢物的光合作用底座。近年来，已经建成了几个用于瞬时植物生物生产的商业大型设施，产品现已投放市场。然而，事实证明，在真正的育种植物系中设计出高产量的工程产品是困难的，这将为低成本的生物生产和新一代作物品种铺平道路。在这个项目中，我们将使用快速瞬时表达系统来设计和组装一种人工合成途径来生产β-香兰素，它是许多不同类型三萜类的前体。三萜类化合物是一大类化学成分多样的天然产物(迄今报告的天然产物超过20,000种)，在农业、食品、化妆品和制药领域有着广泛的应用。我们将把这个DNA编码的途径转移到一个新的模式植物系统--地钱的基因组中。马钱蒂亚可以说是目前最简单、最容易处理的陆地植物。我们已经构建了许多与Marchantia一起工作的新工具，并将使用这些工具来触发含有细胞的专业油体产生β-香菇蛋白。油体是天然的安全容器，可以在细胞中积累高浓度的化合物。然后，我们将使用已知的发育调节剂来控制Marchantia组织中的石油细胞增殖，以创造高产的可收获植物器官。我们相信，该项目将为整个生物体工程和作物改良提供一个原型。

Plants have a rich endogenous metabolism that can be reprogrammed by genetic transformation. Transient expression techniques have allowed their development as photosynthetic chassis for low-cost high-yield production of vaccines, therapeutic proteins and metabolites. In recent years, several commercial large-scale facilities for transient plant-based bioproduction have been constructed, with products now reaching the market. However, it has proved difficult to engineer high yields of engineered products in true-breeding plant lines, which would pave the way for low-cost bioproduction and new generations of crop varieties.In this project, we will use fast transient expression systems to design and assemble an artificial synthetic pathway for the production of beta-amyrin, a precursor for many different types of triterpene. The triterpenoids are a large, chemically diverse group of natural products (over 20,000 reported to date), with a wide range of applications in the agricultural, food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical sectors. We will transfer this DNA-encoded pathway into the genome of a new model plant system, the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. Marchantia is arguably the simplest and easiest land plant to work with at this time. We have constructed many new tools for work with Marchantia, and will use these to trigger beta-amyrin production to specialised oil body containing cells. Oil bodies are natural safe containers for accumulation of high concentrations of compounds in cells. We will then use known developmental regulators to engineer oil cell proliferation in Marchantia tissues to create high-yield harvestable plant organs. We believe the project will provide a prototype for whole organism engineering, and crop improvement.