Engineering Enhanced Plants for Arsenic Remediation

描述（由申请人提供）：砷是美国最严重的环境污染物之一。传统的砷修复方法包括挖掘受污染的土壤并将其置于危险废物填埋场。这种方法是高度劳动密集型和昂贵的，特别是对于大型场地。另一种补救技术是植物补救，即利用植物从受污染的土壤或水中去除毒素，并将毒素集中在生物量中，与环境相比。Edenspace是利用植物修复受污染土壤或水中砷的行业领导者，并在全国各地的许多地点开展工作。砷植物修复目前使用的是一种积累砷的蕨类植物。虽然这种多年生热带植物可以有效地积累和去除土壤中的砷，但它的使用受到限制，因为需要移植幼苗而不是从种子中生长植物，并且它对-5 ° C以下的持续温度的耐受性较低。开发具有类似积累砷能力的更广泛适应的替代作物将提高解决环境砷问题的能力。对于这个STTR项目，Edenspace及其研究合作伙伴，马萨诸塞州大学（UMass）建议开发用于砷植物修复的增强植物。许多植物和微生物的基因已被分离和表征，赋予四倍增加的砷耐受性和吸收的模式植物拟南芥。由于这种植物由于体积小而具有较低的商业修复潜力，该团队将用转基因对一种高生物量的非食用作物油菜进行生物工程改造。在第一阶段，Edenspace将确认转基因B。在转基因拟南芥中观察到相同的砷耐受性和吸收表型，这将导致在第二阶段进行小规模的田间示范。 公共卫生相关性：砷是一种剧毒物质，在环境中自然存在，或在受污染的地点因人类活动而富集，对人类和野生动物造成重大健康问题。该项目旨在开发一种有效和经济的技术，能够利用植物从环境中去除砷，并降低公众接触砷的风险。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Arsenic is one of the most serious environmental contaminants in the United States. The traditional method for arsenic remediation involves excavating the contaminated soil and disposing it in hazardous waste landfills. This method is highly labor intensive and costly, especially for large sites. An alternative remediation technique is phytoremediation, the use of plants to remove toxins from contaminated soils or water and concentrate the toxins in the biomass compared to the environment. Edenspace is an industry leader in the use of plants to remediate arsenic from contaminated soil or water and has worked on numerous sites across the country. Arsenic phytoremediation currently uses an arsenic-accumulating fern plant. While this perennial tropical plant is effective is accumulating and removing arsenic from the soil, its use is limited by the need to transplant young plants rather than growing plants from seed, and by its low tolerance for sustained temperatures below -5¿C. Development of alternative crops that are more widely adapted with similar abilities to accumulate arsenic will provide enhanced capabilities to address the problem of environmental arsenic. For this STTR project Edenspace and its research partner, the University of Massachusetts (UMass) propose to develop enhanced plants for arsenic phytoremediation. A number of plant and microbial genes have been isolated and characterized that confer fourfold increases in arsenic tolerance and uptake in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Because this plant has low commercial potential for remediation due to its small size, the team will bioengineer a highbiomass, non-food variety of a row crop, Brassica napus, with the transgenes. In Phase I, Edenspace will confirm that the transgenic B. napus shows the same arsenic tolerance and uptake phenotype observed in transgenic Arabidopsis, which will lead in Phase II to a small scale field demonstration. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Arsenic is a highly toxic substance found either naturally in the environment or concentrated by human activity at contaminated sites, and provides significant health concerns to humans and wildlife. This project intends to develop an effective and economical technology capable of removing arsenic from the environment using plants and lowering the public's risk of exposure to arsenic.