Logic gate control of plant gene expression

Project title: Logic gate control of plant gene expression

Application Domain: Industrial Biotechnology

The challenge

As we have manipulated our food crops to grow faster and produce more yield, we have lost desirable traits like the ability to tolerate environmental stresses, which has a negative impact on growth.

Our response

This project aims to produce new gene regulators that enact more sophisticated logic decisions in plant gene expression to give farmers and plant biotechnology companies more control over plant development and plant products.

Impact

Many industries would benefit from this technology (agriculture, plant biotech companies, medical and nutraceutical). Enhancing the production of food and economically important plant-based metabolites is essential in a world with a growing population, finite resources and a changing environment.

Team

The team is comprised of CSIRO Synthetic Biology Future Science Fellow Dr Brendan Kidd, Postdoctoral scientist Dr. James Lloyd, PhD student Mr Muhammad Adil Khan and Prof. Ryan Lister at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at the University of Western Australia. The project is co-supervised by Prof. Karam Singh and Prof. Kemal Kazan at CSIRO Agriculture (Perth and Brisbane) and the project has linkages with Prof. Surinder Singh and the Oil Metabolism team at CSIRO in Canberra.