The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SFF) approved last week four SSF Agenda 2030 Research (ARC) Centers on Future Advanced Technology for Sustainability. The project “Re-designing photosynthesis for future food security” with Åsa Strand from UPSC as main applicant was granted. Åsa Strand and her three co-applicants want to improve photosynthesis and apply CRISPR/Cas9 and other genetic modification techniques to increase crop productivity.
The world-wide crop production is stagnating while the population is growing which threatens food security. “Zero hunger” is defined as one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals that are addressed by the Agenda 2030. Åsa Strand and her co-applicants plan to target this goal by improving crop productivity through optimising the efficiency of photosynthesis. Because plants are only using a fraction of the light energy that they perceive, the researchers want to optimise the harvest of the light energy by plants and identify limiting steps during carbon fixation.
Åsa Strand’s co-applicants are Alexey Amunts from Stockholm University, Paul Hudson from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Alizée Malnoë who is like Åsa Strand working at the Department of Plant Physiology at Umeå University. All of them are internationally recognized and bring in different competences to the project. They will closely collaborate with the biotechnology company SweTree Technologies which will help them to test their engineering strategies in transformable crop species that are relevant to the Swedish agriculture.
The researchers will use cyanobacteria and Arabidopsis as two model systems in parallel. Cyanobacteria use the light energy much more efficiently compared to plants and also their carbon fixation rates are higher. The plant chloroplasts, the place where photosynthesis takes place, share the same ancestor as todays cyanobacteria. During evolution, photosynthesis in the chloroplast was adjusted to coordinate it with the more complex development and growth of plants – on the expense of the photosynthetic efficiency. The researchers hope that they can transfer knowledge from cyanobacteria to the chloroplasts of plants and maybe even re-introduce genes that were lost or modified in plants during evolution.
Their assumption is that photosynthesis in Cyanobacteria is adapted first and foremost to biomass formation. They think that the comparison between Cyanobacteria and plants will allow them to define the bottlenecks that restrict the light harvesting efficiency and limits the carbon fixation rate. Using multiple research lines and genetic engineering, they hope to break the bottlenecks and improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in plants and like this increase their productivity. Several initiatives are working internationally on improving biological photosynthetic efficiency using different approaches and the researchers hope to complement these efforts with their novel approach.
Four strategic areas have been identified by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research in the frame of their call for SSF-ARC Centers. These were “Future Nuclear Power”, “Plant Biotechnology including GMO and CRISPR/Cas9” which is the area that Åsa Strand applied for, “Hydrogen/Fuel Cells and Next Generation of Antibiotics and/or Actions to prevent pandemics”. In every strategic area, one application was granted. The four centers will share 200 million SEK.
The researchers plan to compare cyanobacteria and plant chloroplasts. Both have common ancestors, but their evolution separated about 1 billion years ago (1bya). The researchers want to transfer knowledge from the photosynthetic more efficient cyanobacteria to the plant chloroplast and like this improve crop productivity (Figure: Daria Chrobok, DC SciArt).Link to the Swedish press release from SSF:
https://strategiska.se/pressmeddelande/har-ar-de-ssf-arc-center-som-far-dela-pa-200-miljoner-kronor/
Information about the applicants:
Alexey Amunts
Associate Professor
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Stockholm University
E-mail:
Phone: +46(0)8161003
https://www.su.se/english/profiles/aamun-1.219419
Paul Hudson
Associate Professor
Division of Systems Biology
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
E-mail:
Phone: +46 (0)70 783 95 07
https://www.kth.se/profile/huds
Alizée Malnoë
Assistant Professor
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Umeå University
E-mail:
Phone: +46(0)907869314
https://www.upsc.se/alizee_malnoe
Åsa Strand
Professor
Department of Plant Physiology
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Umeå University
E-mail:
Phone: +46 (0)90 786 9314
https://www.upsc.se/asa_strand