Engineering broad spectrum disease resistant proteins

通过合成生物学（SB）的工程概念的应用在植物中的探索不如在细菌系统中那么多，但有望获得重大的科学和生物技术回报。植物高度灵活的代谢能力及其从阳光中捕获能量的能力使其成为高效生产各种合成产品的理想平台。另一个有希望的途径是，工程植物对病原体和极端环境等外部条件的反应可以显著提高作物产量，并帮助我们确保粮食生产。植物疾病是对粮食生产的持续威胁，目前全球造成的作物损失超过1000亿美元，这使得设计一种可以暂时控制植物免疫反应的合成控制系统特别有吸引力。在自然界中，植物免疫的激活是由专门的受体实现的，它们中的每一个都进化成识别有限数量的病原体。该提案的目的是利用工程原理在植物中构建广谱免疫受体和抗性。这些工具的开发和应用有望加快未来旨在预防和/或控制农业新出现疾病的遗传工程和系统生物学方法。

The application of engineering concepts via Synthetic Biology (SB) has not been explored as much in plants as in bacterial systems but promises significant scientific and biotechnological rewards. The highly versatile metabolic capabilities of plants and their ability to capture energy from sunlight makes them ideal platforms for energy-efficient generation of diverse synthetic products. Another promising avenue is that engineering plant responses to external conditions such as the presence of pathogens and environmental extremes can result in significant improvements in crop yields and help us ensure food production. Plant diseases are a continuous threat to food production causing crop losses that currently exceed $100 billion worldwide, which makes engineering a synthetic control system that can allow temporal control of plant immune responses particularly appealing. In nature, activation of plant immunity is achieved by specialized receptors, each of them evolved to recognize a limited number of pathogens. The aim of this proposal is to use engineering principles to build broad-spectrum immune receptors and resistance in plants. The development and application of these tools to is expected to expedite future genetic engineering and systems biology approaches aimed to prevent and/or control emerging disease in agriculture.