The potential of bacterial microcompartment architectures for phytonanotechnology

Abstract

The application of nanotechnology to plants, termed phytonanotechnology, has the potential to revolutionize plant research and agricultural production. Advancements in phytonanotechnology will allow for the time‐controlled and target‐specific release of bioactive compounds and agrochemicals to alter and optimize conventional plant production systems. A diverse range of engineered nanoparticles with unique physiochemical properties is currently being investigated to determine their suitability for plants. Improvements in crop yield, disease resistance and nutrient and pesticide management are all possible using designed nanocarriers. However, despite these prospective benefits, research to thoroughly understand the precise activity, localization and potential phytotoxicity of these nanoparticles within plant systems is required. Protein‐based bacterial microcompartment shell proteins that self‐assemble into spherical shells, nanotubes and sheets could be of immense value for phytonanotechnology due to their ease of manipulation, multifunctionality, rapid and efficient producibility and biodegradability. In this review, we explore bacterial microcompartment‐based architectures within the scope of phytonanotechnology.

Innate and engineered attributes of bacterial microcompartments for applications in bio-materials science

“…105 The use of BMCs has been also proposed in the field of phytonanotechnology using the nanostructures derived from the BMC shells for the controlled uptake and release of fertilizers, pesticides, or other agrochemicals that can interact directly to benefit the plant. 106 An advantage of BMCs as drug delivery vehicles is that they can shelter the cargo from thermal and pH stress. 51,107 However, the biocompatibility of BMC needs to be explored.…”

Towards using bacterial microcompartments as a platform for spatial metabolic engineering in the industrially important and metabolically versatile Zymomonas mobilis

“…Bacterial microcompartments (Kerfeld et al, 2018;Sutter et al, 2021) provide a natural model for compartmentalization inside a prokaryotic cell. The utilization of these self-assembling organelles as scaffolds for metabolic enzymes is a sophisticated approach that is becoming widely useful (Kirst and Kerfeld, 2019;Kerfeld and Sutter, 2020;Raba and Kerfeld, 2022). BMC shells natively sequester an enzymatic core that carries out a metabolic pathway.…”