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Descripción
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| The extensive use of synthetic N fertilizers in developed countries poses enormous environmental threats that must be addressed. The awareness that biological N2 fixation can be used as alternative to the synthetic N fertilizers in the implementation of modern sustainable agricultural practices is an underlying driving force for nitrogenase studies. An ambitious challenge of plant biotechnology is to increase cereal crop productivity by engineering plants to fix their own nitrogen, i.e. by functional expression of bacterial N2 fixation (nif) genes in the plant. Two identified barriers have traditionally impaired this approach: the known sensitivity of nitrogenase to O2 (the by-product of plant photosynthesis) and the genetic/biochemical complexity of nitrogenase biosynthesis. Balanced expression of at least 9 nif gene is required to mature nitrogenase structural polypeptides into their catalytically active forms. Both nitrogenase components, as well as most proteins required for the assembly of their metal clusters, are very sensitive to O2. Here we present data demonstrating that the mitochondrial matrix provides a low O2 environment appropriate for the assembly and the activity of nitrogenase components. In addition, a combined synthetic biology and biochemical complementation approach is being used to tackle the problem of nitrogenase genetic complexity. Advances towards expressing a full nitrogenase complex in eukaryotic cells will be presented. | |
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Internacional
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Si |
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ISSN o ISBN
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0000000000 |
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Entidad relacionada
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EMBO Conference: The nitrogen nutrition of plants |
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Nacionalidad Entidad
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Sin nacionalidad |
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Lugar del congreso
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Montpellier |