For decades, the field of plant engineering has relied on Agrobacterium infection to transfer genes to plants. A widely used model organism, Nicotiana benthamiana, has become a workhorse in the plant biology field because of its unique ability to rapidly express genes delivered by Agrobacterium within just 2 to 5 days, sidestepping the lengthy process of waiting months to engineer a whole plant. This system allows researchers to quickly test and study the genetic transformations occurring in the plant.
This method has led to significant advances in basic plant biology research, and has also opened up the possibility of molecular farming, an industry focused on producing molecules on-demand within the leaves of a plant, allowing the plant to essentially act as a small factory.
“However, even though researchers have been using this system for decades, we have a very poor understanding of what’s happening under the hood,” said Patrick Shih, faculty scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) Division and Director of Plant Biosystems Design at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). “If we can learn more about what’s happening at a molecular level, we can use that knowledge to improve plant engineering.”
In a new study published in Nature Plants, JBEI researchers developed a modeling framework of the Agrobacterium system that provided insights into its molecular mechanisms. Using this framework, they were able to better understand the bottlenecks in the system and create solutions that ended up boosting the production of molecules in plants.
