Driving Precision and Scale in Plant Bioengineering

Advancing plant science requires bioengineering tools that are precise, scalable, and accessible. Current bottlenecks in plant bioengineering limit the ability to modify plants efficiently and at scale, slowing progress in both research and crop improvement. By inventing and refining state-of-the-art technologies, we aim to overcome these challenges and unlock new possibilities for plant programming.

The Bioengineering team focuses on developing innovative strategies and synthetic biology (SynBio) tools to enable advanced plant bioengineering in the crops important to CROPPS. These technologies are designed not only to support CROPPS’ mission but also to benefit the broader plant science and agricultural communities.

Leads: Joyce Van Eck, Marceline Egnin, Arjun Khakhar, Sijin Li

Senior Personnel: Chris Alabi, Giulia Guidi, Sarah Hind, José Martínez

Research Goals: Through collaborative efforts, the team is working to:

  • Build Advanced Bioengineering Capacity: Develop robotic, automated, and computational tools to reduce labor, improve precision, and scale up plant bioengineering efforts.
  • Enhance Gene Delivery: Leverage nanomaterials to achieve more efficient gene delivery into plant cells, surpassing the limitations of current methods.
  • Adopt Bioengineering Solutions for Key Crops: Create efficient methods for generating stably modified lines for tomato, maize, cotton and sweet potato.
  • Adapt Generalized SynBio Tools: for crop plants to create sophisticated programmed plants.

Objectives:

  • Develop automated systems that increase efficiency, precision, and scalability in plant bioengineering.
  • Improve gene delivery into plant cells using nanomaterials to enhance reliability and success rates.
  • Apply new bioengineering methods to generate improved versions of crops central to CROPPS research.
  • Use SynBio tools to design genetic programs that define the timing, logic, and dynamics of gene regulation.