Research Projects

Agricultural yield is strongly influenced by plant growth and development. Advances in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying plant development have identified key regulators of agronomic traits. These regulators are key targets for transgenic approaches to engineer new forms and functions in plants. The constitutive expression of these genes in the whole transgenic plant may cause abnormalities in the growth patterns. Our limited ability to precisely control and target these genes overexpression at where (space) and when (time) needed in the whole plant is a barrier to apply this knowledge to genetically engineer robust crop varieties with pre-defined, desirable morphology and architecture that will enable agricultural stability. Synthetic gene circuits are a promising approach for programmable control of transgene expression to engineer new biotechnology applications in plants. Due to long duration required to generate stable transgenic lines, only few circuit designs are developed in plants. These tools are either limited in their application to specific part of the whole plant or their output activity is not reversible. Taking inspiration from natural gene regulatory systems, I propose to design and develop new synthetic gene circuits and logic gates capable of reversibly controlling transgene expression in response to multiple customizable input signals in any part of the whole plant. These synthetic systems can conditionally perform both gene activation and gene repression in an input-state dependent manner. As proof-of-principle for applications of transcriptional programming by logic gates and switches in plants, I will engineer a synthetic transcription platform with decision-making capabilities to program root nitrogen acquisition and modulate plant growth. These new programmable genetic devices (ON/OFF switches) will provide the ability to fine-tune gene expression programs in specific tissues or cells at certain developmental time points in the whole plant that cannot be achieved by conventional transcriptional control technologies, showing its value to engineer a new generation of resilient crops for sustainable food production.