Plant Chemical Genetics: From Phenotype-Based Screens to Synthetic Biology

Recent Advances in Plant Chemical Biology of Jasmonates

“…The mode of action of NOPh was carefully examined through genetic studies, and concluded to entail selective activation of the ERF-ORA branch, one of the two major branches of jasmonate signaling pathway, through binding with COI1-JAZ9 coreceptor pair ( Figure 3D). This result suggested the possible significance of chemical tools for further studies on the function of genetically redundant plant hormone receptors, and demonstrated that the transient degradation of an individual JAZ subtype might circumvent the functional compensation by other members in multigene family, which occurs in mutant plant during the development [30]. The use of a chemical tool enables the dissection of genetically redundant COI1-JAZ coreceptor function to disclose the contribution of individual subtype.…”

“…In general, a complete understanding of plant hormone signaling is difficult due to significant genetic redundancy of the receptor encoding genes in the plant genome [29], which precludes the exact clarification of the function of each subtype [30]. Functional redundancy among the members of such a multigene family will often hinder the genetic analysis of the contribution of individual genes using a reverse genetics strategy, because genetic knock-out of one redundant gene will be compensated for by other genes belonging to the same gene family.…”

Chemical regulators of plant hormones and their applications in basic research and agriculture*

“…Chemical genetics is a powerful tool in biology studies that utilizes small molecules screened from chemical libraries to decipher biological processes. Compared to conventional genetics approaches, chemical genetics has several important advantages, including that it can overcome the lethality of certain mutations and gene redundancy [394][395][396]. In the above sections, we summarized numerous chemical regulators that were screened from chemical libraries or were rationally designed ( Figures 1-10, and Table 1).…”

“…For example, Figure 10. schematic representation of the workflow of chemical screening (adapted from dejonghe and russinova 396) ) and its applicable fields. on an orthogonal ligand-receptor strategy (reviewed by Chockalingam, Zhao [401]; Kavita [402]; Assaf et al [403]), mandipropamid (80; Figure 7(A)), an agrochemical, was found to trigger ABA-mediated drought stress responses in plants via an engineered ABA receptor, PYR1 (PYR1 MANDI ), which carries amino-acid substitutions in key residues of the pocket of PYR1 MANDI , which results in its selective binding to mandipropamid but not the natural ligand ABA [144].…”

Optimizing the Use of a Liquid Handling Robot to Conduct a High Throughput Forward Chemical Genetics Screen of <em>Arabidopsis thaliana</em>

“…In the past 20 years researchers in the field of plant biology have made great strides using chemical genetics approaches, both forward and reverse, improving our understanding of cell wall biosynthesis, the cytoskeleton, hormone biosynthesis and signaling, gravitropism, pathogenesis, purine biosynthesis, and endomembrane trafficking 1,2,3,4,5 . Employing forward chemical genetics techniques enables the identification of phenotypes of interest and allows researchers to understand the genotypic underpinnings of particular processes.…”