Plant metabolic engineering in the synthetic biology era: plant chassis selection

Potential for Applying Continuous Directed Evolution to Plant Enzymes: An Exploratory Study

“…Synthetic biology (SynBio) offers a suite of such approaches. SynBio lies at the intersection between discovery-driven biology and goal-oriented engineering and brings a fresh perspective to plant improvement by adding to the breeding toolbox [6,7]. SynBio has enormous potential in enzyme engineering, ranging from improving existing catalytic activities to creating new ones [7][8][9].…”

Engineering of Metabolic Pathways Using Synthetic Enzyme Complexes

“…This finding could lead to a resurgence in the use of plant cell cultures. Recent developments in metabolic engineering and the application of a synthetic biology approach have been summarized (Stewart et al, 2018). Key tools and requirements for metabolic engineering in plants are a set of promoters for various functions.…”

Synthetic Biology efforts in engineering nitrogenase Fe protein biosynthesis in plastids

“…Two dicotyledonous species from the first group, Arabidopsis thaliana and N. benthamiana, and one monocotyledonous from the second, O. sativa, are among the most popular chassis used in plant SynBio approaches and the ones used in this work. Arabidopsis is popular due to its little stature, short life-cycle, small well-annotated genome and amount of genetic tools available, furthermore, its research is easily transferable to Camelina sativa valued for oilseed production (Flavell, 2009;Holland and Jez, 2018;Stewart et al, 2018). N. benthamiana prominence lies in the ease of its transformation and its ability to rapidly and highly express transgenes, making it the plant biofactory of choice (Bally et al, 2018).…”

“…Other systems include dicotyledonous platforms, e.g. tobacco, which stand out for their results (Stewart et al, 2018). Monocots, such as maize or rice, sometimes are the final target of the modifications engineered in model plants, but they present challenges in their manipulation that force them into a second-place as plant chassis (Sood et al, 2011).…”