Re-Leaf · Environment-coupled metabolic models for engineering high-temperature and drought REsistant LEAF metabolism.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-08-02 → 2020-08-01
- EU contribution
- €183,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Environment-coupled metabolic models for engineering high-temperature and drought REsistantLEAF metabolism.
Nearly all plants use energy from sunlight and carbon dioxide from the air to generate sugars and oxygen in a process called photosynthesis. Throughout evolutions different types of photosynthesis have evolved to allow plants to grow in various habitats. Most plants perform C3 photosynthesis. These, so called, C3 plants open their stomata - pores on the leaf’s surface that allow for gas exchange - during the day and carbon dioxide uptake and conversion to sugars proceeds at the same time. While this process is energetically efficient it can lead to high water loss in hot and dry climates. Therefore, some plant species have evolved Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM), a type of photosynthesis where carbon dioxide is taken up at night and initially fixed to form an acid that is stored in specialized storage compartments termed vacuoles. During the day, when sufficient energy from the sun is available this acid is used to build energy-rich sugars. Some plants can switch from one type of photosynthesis to the other or operate in an intermediate state - depending on the environment. There is great interest in engineering more drought-resistant crop species by introducing CAM into C3 plants. However, one of the open questions is whether full CAM or alternative water saving modes would be more productive in the environments typically experienced by C3 crops.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Food security is one of the biggest challenges of our century. Climate change and an increasing human population call forcrop plants that are resistant to abiotic stresses, such as heat and drought while maintaining high productivity and nutritionalvalues. This will require rational strategies for metabolic engineering of crop plants. Fundamental to this engineeringchallenge is the modelling of leaf metabolism. Leaves are the main site of photosynthesis and therefore the interface wherecarbon from the environment is assimilated to synthesise and maintain cellular components. Plants have developed differentmechanisms to fix carbon: C3, C4, and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM). While C3 photosynthesis is the mostwidespread form, the latter two exhibit higher efficiency at higher temperatures or drought, respectively. Current large-scalemetabolic models lack a mathematical description of processes on the interface between the environment and the leaf. Toaddress this problem, I intend to devise a computational approach that couples genome-scale metabolic modeling to theenvironment by explicitly modeling gas-water exchange. These multi-layer models will help address fundamental questionsabout the operation of C4 photosynthesis and CAM. The workplan comprises two research objectives: 1) Coupling CO2-water gas exchange models with multi-timestep diel models: The CO2-water exchange models will allow changingenvironmental conditions during the diel cycle (e.g., temperature and humidity cycles) to be coupled to the behavior of themetabolic models. These environment-coupled models will be used to address the second research objective: 2) Model-driven studies of C4 and CAM metabolism: The extended diel models will be used to investigate metabolic engineeringstrategies for improved productivity under high temperatures (e.g., by introducing C4) and to understand the trade-offbetween productivity and water-use efficiency in both C3 and CAM plants.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union