Abstract
Climatic extremes threaten agricultural sustainability worldwide. One approach to increase plant water-use efficiency (WUE) is to introduce crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) into C3 crops. Such a task requires comprehensive systems-level understanding of the enzymatic and regulatory pathways underpinning this temporal CO2 pump. Here we review the progress that has been made in achieving this goal. Given that CAM arose through multiple independent evolutionary origins, comparative transcriptomics and genomics of taxonomically diverse CAM species are being used to define the genetic 'parts list' required to operate the core CAM functional modules of nocturnal carboxylation, diurnal decarboxylation, and inverse stomatal regulation. Engineered CAM offers the potential to sustain plant productivity for food, feed, fiber, and biofuel production in hotter and drier climates.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 327-338 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Trends in Plant Science |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2014 |
Funding
This Review is based on work supported by the DOE, Office of Science, Genomic Science Program under Award Number DE-SC0008834. The M. crystallinum transcriptome and mRNA expression data were supported by the National Science Foundation, USA (IOS-084373 awarded to K.A.S. and J.C.C.). The K. fedtschenkoi sequencing and CAM functional genomics project was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, UK (BB/F009313/1 awarded to J.H.). This publication was also made possible by grants from the National Center for Research Resources (5P20RR016464-11) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (8 P20 GM103440-11) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through its support of the Nevada Genomics Center and the Nevada Center for Bioinformatics. The contents of this Feature Review are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the DOE or NIH. The authors acknowledge the contributions of all of the members of the CAM Biodesign research team, including: Jin-Gui Chen, Enrique De Paoli, Nancy Engle, Lee Gunter, Sara Jawdy, Guruprasad H. Kora, Kaitlin Palla, Hengfu Yin, Zack Moore, and Heather Tran (ORNL); Susie Boxall and Louisa Dever (University of Liverpool); Rebecca Albion, Travis Garcia, Jungmin Ha, Sung Don Lim, Jesse Mayer, Juli Petereit, Richard Tillett, Bernard Wone, and Won Cheol Yim (University of Nevada, Reno); and Hong Guo (University of Tennessee). They also thank Mary Ann Cushman for critical review and clarifying comments on the manuscript and Lori Kunder for assistance with figure presentation. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for the US DOE under Contract Number DE–AC05–00OR22725.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Nevada Center for Bioinformatics | |
| Nevada Genomics Center | |
| National Science Foundation | IOS-084373 |
| National Institutes of Health | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | DE–AC05–00OR22725 |
| National Institute of General Medical Sciences | 8 P20 GM103440-11 |
| National Center for Research Resources | P20RR016464 |
| Office of Science | DE-SC0008834 |
| Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | BB/F009313/1 |
Keywords
- Biodesign
- Bioenergy
- Crassulacean acid metabolism
- Water-use efficiency
