Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Plant Physiol. 2022 Feb 4;188(2):738-748. doi: 10.1093/plphys/kiab568.
The ability to engineer plant form will enable the production of novel agricultural products designed to tolerate extreme stresses, boost yield, reduce waste, and improve manufacturing practices. While historically, plants were altered through breeding to change their size or shape, advances in our understanding of plant development and our ability to genetically engineer complex eukaryotes are leading to the direct engineering of plant structure. In this review, I highlight the central role of auxin in plant development and the synthetic biology approaches that could be used to turn auxin-response regulators into powerful tools for modifying plant form. I hypothesize that recoded, gain-of-function auxin response proteins combined with synthetic regulation could be used to override endogenous auxin signaling and control plant structure. I also argue that auxin-response regulators are key to engineering development in nonmodel plants and that single-cell -omics techniques will be essential for characterizing and modifying auxin response in these plants. Collectively, advances in synthetic biology, single-cell -omics, and our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning development have set the stage for a new era in the engineering of plant structure.
工程植物形态的能力将使生产新型农产品成为可能，这些农产品旨在耐受极端压力、提高产量、减少浪费和改进制造实践。虽然历史上，植物通过选育来改变其大小或形状，但我们对植物发育的理解的进步和我们对复杂真核生物进行基因工程的能力正在导致植物结构的直接工程化。在这篇综述中，我强调了生长素在植物发育中的核心作用，以及可能用于将生长素反应调节剂转化为修饰植物形态的强大工具的合成生物学方法。我假设，经重新编码的、功能获得的生长素反应蛋白与合成调控相结合，可用于推翻内源性生长素信号并控制植物结构。我还认为，生长素反应调节剂是工程非模式植物发育的关键，单细胞组学技术对于描述和修饰这些植物中的生长素反应至关重要。总之，合成生物学、单细胞组学和我们对发育基础分子机制的理解的进步为植物结构工程的新时代奠定了基础。
