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Rewiring gene circuitry for plant improvement

Nature Genetics volume 56, pages 1574–1582 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Aspirations for high crop growth and yield, nutritional quality and bioproduction of materials are challenged by climate change and limited adoption of new technologies. Here, we review recent advances in approaches to profile and model gene regulatory activity over developmental and response time in specific cells, which have revealed the basis of variation in plant phenotypes: both redeployment of key regulators to new contexts and their repurposing to control different slates of genes. New synthetic biology tools allow tunable, spatiotemporal regulation of transgenes, while recent gene-editing technologies enable manipulation of the regulation of native genes. Ultimately, understanding how gene circuitry is wired to control form and function across varied plant species, combined with advanced technology to rewire that circuitry, will unlock solutions to our greatest challenges in agriculture, energy and the environment.

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Fig. 1: Gene regulatory network architecture.
Fig. 2: Modes of GRN evolution that drive variation in development and environmental plasticity.
Fig. 3: Synthetic biology and gene-editing approaches to network manipulation.

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Acknowledgements

We thank G. Akmakjian, C. Sepulveda, A. Morris and S. Borowsky for helpful suggestions. Our research is supported by the US National Science Foundation (IOS-211980 to J.B.-S. and DGE-1922642 to J.B.-S. and A.T.B.) and the US Department of Agriculture, US National Institute of Food and Agriculture—Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grants 2019-67013-29313 (to J.B.-S.) and 1026477 (to A.T.B.).

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  1. Center for Plant Cell Biology, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Alexander T. Borowsky & Julia Bailey-Serres

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  1. Alexander T. Borowsky
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A.T.B. and J.B.-S. conceptualized the paper. A.T.B. wrote the original draft. A.T.B. and J.B.-S. revised and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Julia Bailey-Serres.

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Borowsky, A.T., Bailey-Serres, J. Rewiring gene circuitry for plant improvement. Nat Genet 56, 1574–1582 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-01806-7

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