Kalluri Udaya C, Yang Xiaohan, Wullschleger Stan D
Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PO Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6422, USA.
Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PO Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6422, USA.
Biodes Res. 2020 Jun 11;2020:7914051. doi: 10.34133/2020/7914051. eCollection 2020.
Our society faces multiple daunting challenges including finding sustainable solutions towards climate change mitigation; efficient production of food, biofuels, and biomaterials; maximizing land-use efficiency; and enabling a sustainable bioeconomy. Plants can provide environmentally and economically sustainable solutions to these challenges due to their inherent capabilities for photosynthetic capture of atmospheric CO, allocation of carbon to various organs and partitioning into various chemical forms, including contributions to total soil carbon. In order to enhance crop productivity and optimize chemistry simultaneously in the above- and belowground plant tissues, transformative biosystems design strategies are needed. Concerted research efforts will be required for accelerating the development of plant cultivars, genotypes, or varieties that are cooptimized in the contexts of biomass-derived fuels and/or materials aboveground and enhanced carbon sequestration belowground. Here, we briefly discuss significant knowledge gaps in our process understanding and the potential of synthetic biology in enabling advancements along the fundamental to applied research arc. Ultimately, a convergence of perspectives from academic, industrial, government, and consumer sectors will be needed to realize the potential merits of plant biosystems design for a carbon neutral bioeconomy.
我们的社会面临多重严峻挑战，包括寻找减缓气候变化的可持续解决方案；高效生产粮食、生物燃料和生物材料；最大限度提高土地利用效率；以及推动可持续生物经济发展。由于植物具有光合捕获大气中二氧化碳、将碳分配到各个器官并转化为各种化学形式（包括对土壤总碳的贡献）的固有能力，因此可为这些挑战提供环境和经济上可持续的解决方案。为了同时提高作物生产力并优化地上和地下植物组织中的化学成分，需要变革性的生物系统设计策略。要加速开发在地上生物质衍生燃料和/或材料以及地下增强碳固存方面共同优化的植物品种、基因型或变种，需要各方协同研究。在此，我们简要讨论了我们在过程理解方面存在的重大知识空白，以及合成生物学在推动从基础研究到应用研究发展方面的潜力。最终，需要学术界、产业界、政府和消费部门的观点汇聚，以实现植物生物系统设计对碳中和生物经济的潜在价值。
