The study is published in the journal\u00a0Nature Communications.<\/p>\n
Terpenoids form the largest class of natural products in plants and have been used by humans for thousands of years. Modern applications for terpenoids range wide, from pharmaceuticals, fragrances, nutraceuticals and biopesticides, to chemical feedstocks. However, in the context of industrial scale production, plant accumulation of terpenoids is rather low, and in the pursuit to extract natural terpenoids, some wild plant species have even become endangered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe investigated novel strategies to sustainably produce high-value terpenoid biomaterials in plants,\u201d said Radin Sadre, synthetic biologist and biochemist in the Department of Horticulture.<\/p>\n
Sadre is the lead author of the study conceived by\u00a0Christoph Benning,\u00a0MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory\u00a0director, and\u00a0Bjoern Hamberger, assistant professor in the\u00a0Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.<\/p>\n
The new synthetic biology tools allow to produce both terpenoids and oil, a biofuel resource, in plant leaves. Plants do not normally accumulate large amounts of oil in leaves.\u00a0Benning\u2019s work on plant oils and lipids\u00a0served as a basis to enhance the oil content in leaves. The oil is stored in plant cells in small lipid droplets that are surrounded by a lipid layer coated with proteins.<\/p>\n
The study shows that\u00a0expanding lipid\u00a0droplets can serve as an engineering platform for terpenoid production. The Hamberger lab focuses on metabolic engineering of terpenoid biosynthetic pathways.<\/p>\n
Normally, terpenoid biosynthesis occurs at specific sites within the plant cells. The synthetic biology approaches retarget and boost the production of the terpenoid building blocks and terpenoids in engineered plants.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used a lipid droplet surface\u00a0expand protein\u00a0from a microalga to anchor different terpenoid synthesis\u00a0expand enzymes\u00a0onto the surface of the plant lipid droplets,\u201d Sadre said. \u201cTargeting of distinct terpenoid synthesis steps to the lipid droplets leads to efficient production of terpenoids.\u201d<\/p>\n
These experiments were done at laboratory scale in the tobacco relative,\u00a0Nicotiana benthamiana. The ultimate goal is the production of industrially relevant terpenoids in high-yield biomass crops, such as switchgrass.<\/p>\n
Another feature of this system is that the terpenoids are trapped in the lipid droplets. This finding may prove useful in the future for industrial processing of engineered biomass crops.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we break open the plant cells in the lab, we can easily collect the lipid droplets \u2013 basically, oil \u2013 with the terpenoids simultaneously,\u201d Sadre said. \u201cI can see many applications where both can be used together, for example, certain \u2018essential oils\u2019 in perfumes or speciality biofuels. Alternatively, further processing can separate terpenoids from the oil for applications where purer compounds are required.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The study is published in the journal\u00a0Nature Communications. Terpenoids form the largest class of natural products in plants and have been used by humans for thousands of years. Modern applications for terpenoids range wide, from pharmaceuticals, fragrances, nutraceuticals and biopesticides, to chemical feedstocks. However, in the context of industrial scale production, plant accumulation of terpenoids […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[12377,7204,5817],"supplier":[753],"class_list":["post-63010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biosynthesis","tag-feedstock","tag-research","supplier-michigan-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63010"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=63010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}