Engineering saline resistance in land plants

在全球范围内，农业需要全球年淡水消耗量的70%，并利用50%的宜居土地。为了确保不断增长的人口的粮食安全，同时采用可持续的农业做法来缓解气候变化，我们必须开发创新的方法，以最大限度地提高粮食生产的效率。理想的特征经常出现在野生或祖先作物物种中，而现代作物品种没有选择这些物种，随后就失去了这些特征。这些有益性状的发现和转移为科学家提高作物对生物和非生物胁迫的适应能力提供了一条很有前途的途径。一个非常令人向往的特征是能够过滤进入植物组织的盐分，使它们能够利用通常会杀死植物的咸水。这在海藻(海藻)中是通过修饰形成细胞外基质的多糖来实现的。由于植物和藻类之间的潜在生物化学不同，这些修饰不可能直接转移到农作物中。幸运的是，在海草的多糖中也发现了类似的修饰。海草与陆地作物关系密切，但它们回到了海洋环境。海草和农作物共有的形态特征使我们能够在它们之间转移这些特征。此外，最近对海草Zostera基因组的测序揭示了这种修饰的候选基因，以及将这一有利特征转移到农作物上的可能方法。该项目将破译植物和半合成生物材料耐盐所需的机制。这将使我们能够将这种过滤带电粒子的生物技术转移到医疗(改进的透析法)、工业(改进反渗透)和农业应用(不需要淡水的作物)。

Globally, agriculture requires 70% of yearly global freshwater consumption and utilises 50% of habitable land. In order to ensure food security for the growing population, whilst incorporating sustainable agricultural practices to mitigate climate change, we must develop innovative approaches to maximise the efficiency of food production. Desirable traits are often found in wild or ancestral crop species, which have not been selected for in modern crop varieties, and subsequently lost. The discovery and transfer of these beneficial traits is a promising route for scientists to enhance crop resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses. A highly desirable traits is the capacity to filter salts from entering plant tissues, allowing them to utilise saline water which would normally kill plants. This is achieved in marine algae (seaweeds) via modifications of polysaccharides that form their extracellular matrices. The direct transfer of these modifications into crop plants is not possible due to the different underlying biochemistry between plants and algae. Fortuitously, a similar modification has been found within polysaccharides of seagrasses. Seagrasses are closely related to terrestrial crop plants, but they returned to the marine environment. The shared morphological traits of seagrasses and crops allows us to transfer these traits between them. Additionally, the recent sequencing of the seagrass Zostera genome has revealed candidate genes for this modification, and possible approaches towards the transfer of this advantageous trait to crop plants. This project will decipher the mechanisms required for saline tolerance in plants and semi-synthetic biomaterials. This will allow us to transfer this biotechnology for filtering charged particles into medical (improved dialysis), industrial (improves reverse osmosis), and agricultural applications (crops that require no freshwater).