PBIGP · Plant-Bacillus Interaction: Gain of Function Project
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-03-17 → 2018-03-16
- EU contribution
- €185,076
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Plant-Bacillus Interaction: Gain of Function Project
The application to the H2020 -MSCA individual fellowship program was done to explore and facilitate the re-integration of the applicant in European scientific community as he was out of the European network for more than 10 years. The stay of the applicant in the department of the Microbiology, Adaptation and Pathology (UMR5240; Lyon, France) that is part of the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) was primarily used built a European network, apply for professional positions (in public and private sectors) in Europe, extend his experience in teaching while developing a new research program that would support his integration within the French or European research system. The main mission of the fellowship was achieved successfully as the applicant had to abandon his fellowship to take a new role a group leader in a private company in France. The applicant had this opportunity from the new network built and new skills acquired during his stay in the host institution. Even if none of the original scientific milestones could be achieved, this fellowship allowed the completions and release to the public domain via publications of synthetic biology tools developed to support plant engineering. The most important outcome was the development of a robust DNA assembly tools that allow support combinatorial and rapid gene assemblies and gene stacking to support the engineering of Agrobaterium transformation compatible hosts (e.g. plants). This tool was completed with the development of a two-component-switch for plants allowing precise and robust control of transgene. This system is a negative switch composed of a RNase that recognizes a specific RNA module. Binding of the RNase prevents the translation of any mRNA sequence that contains the RNA module by cleaving it. It adds further sophistication to the fine-tuning of expression of metabolic pathways, for example, by allowing multiple genes to be switched off in response to an external cue and/or in specific tissues This system was also validated to simultaneously repress the expression of two proteins in a specific plant tissue
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
New and sustainable methods must be developed to meet society’s ever-increasing demand for food, energy, and chemicals. Feeding tomorrow’s population requires increasing food production sustainably and developing novel approaches to invert the excessive consumption growth of fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation-water by modern agriculture. Fortunately, symbiotic or non-symbiotic interactions between plant-hosts and specific microbes were shown to promote host-vigor, and improved product quality and yield and plant-growth-promoting bacilli have been commercialized as biofertilizers in recent years. However those benefits associated to the PGPRs are divided across a large diversity of bacteria; and host-plants demands, nutrient availability, and pathogen attacks vary constantly during the entire plant lifespan. The proposed research project for the H2020-MSCA-IF-2014 will focus on identifying, validating, and stacking bacterial gene clusters responsible of those properties. The approach consists of establishing libraries of hybrid-bacillus and screening them for novel plant growth promoting properties. Because of the current importance of reducing inputs in agriculture while increasing crop yield; the screen will focus on identifying properties that allows decreasing use of chemical fertilizers such nitrogen and phosphorus and improve drought and salt tolerance. The proposed research intertwines fundamental and applied fields and is designed to seed larger projects toward a sustainable agriculture and feed tomorrow’s population. It is designed to increase our knowledge in plant-microbe interactions, result in discoveries, and generate innovative technologies.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · ParisCoordinatorFrance
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union