Imagine a world where crops can thrive regardless of climate or disease and provide all the essential nutrients our bodies need. Researchers at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry are now part of a U.K.-based initiative to explore that very possibility.
Western professor Bogumil Karas has been named a research and development creator in phase one of ARIA's Synthetic Plants program to design and develop functioning optimized plant chloroplasts that can transfer genomes into crops to provide enhanced traits. (Megan Morris/Schulich Medicine & Dentistry)
The Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA), the U.K.'s research and development funding agency, announced June 2 that Schulich Medicine & Dentistry professor Bogumil Karas has been named as a research and development creator in phase one of its Synthetic Plants program. ARIA focuses on projects with potential to produce transformative technological change, or a paradigm shift in an area of science. This specific program aims to launch a new generation of major crops that are more productive, resilient and sustainable.
"Representing 80 per cent of the world's biomass, with scope to provide everything from food to pharmaceuticals, plants are a critical lever for addressing the twin challenges of food insecurity and climate change," said Angie Burnett, programme director for Synthetic Plants at ARIA. "To unlock their potential, we must accelerate the pace of agricultural innovation."
Karas, professor in the department of biochemistry, has been awarded £869,000 (about $1.5 million CAD) to design and develop functioning optimized plant chloroplasts that can transfer genomes into crops to provide enhanced traits.
"Our goal is to eventually enable the rewriting of entire genomes (the complete set of DNA found in a cell), not just editing individual genes," said Karas.
"If we can advance the technology to the point where we can design and synthesize entire genomes, we could develop crops that are more nutrient-dense, resilient and longer-lasting."
- Schulich Medicine & Dentistry professor Bogumil Karas
Inside the Biotron Experimental Climate Change Research Centre at Western, Karas' team will be growing potatoes - the third most important crop globally in terms of food for human consumption.
Their plan is to isolate some of the plant tissues from the potatoes to create protoplasts - a "naked" cell where the cell walls are removed to be able to deliver DNA.
Then, they will take that cell and regenerate it back into the plant.
"We are building this large chloroplast genome for a particular strain of potato and then reinstalling it back into the potato cell to hopefully regenerate a new potato plant from that," said Emma Walker, biochemistry PhD candidate in Karas' lab.
His team's previous research has proven bacteria can pass DNA to yeast, algae and other bacteria and they are now looking to do this in plant cells using the same natural process.
Walker explained they will be following a process she had used in the first three years of her PhD studies for building the chloroplast genome of an algal species - a different organism with a slightly smaller genome. The process, sometimes referred to as yeast assembly, involves putting overlapping pieces of DNA into yeast and the innate machinery in the cell's nucleus recognizes the overlapping pieces and stitches them together to form a single molecule.
"You're taking overlapping fragments, throwing them into yeast, and then the yeast is doing the hard work," said Walker.
The lab will be dedicating the bulk of their time to designing what the chloroplast will look like, how they will physically assemble it and what elements they will put into the chloroplast. The team will also develop novel methods for delivering these large, engineered genomes back into plant cells.
Karas also noted that if this technology can be developed for potatoes, it could be applied later to other crop species.
The researchers noted the initiative involves consultation with scientists, incorporates a bioethics component and will seek feedback from the general public. Phase one will also involve examining the social and ethical considerations around synthetic biology and what is needed to navigate them.
As the initiative advances, it could help drive more solutions for both food insecurity and climate change.
"Essentially, if we succeed in developing the genome-writing technology proposed by ARIA, we could have almost limitless ability to engineer the genome," said Karas.
"This would expand the potential to make crops resistant to diseases and would allow us to introduce traits so species could survive in harsh climates and be accessible in more places," he added. "One day, we could also look at potentially making potatoes self-fertilizing, which would benefit crop yield, help the economy and reduce pollution."
