Plant Power: The Ultimate Way to Go Green

Activity: Talk or presentation typesLecture and oral contribution

Birger Lindberg Møller - Lecturer

Photosynthetic organisms are able to use solar energy and carbon dioxide for the production of organic compounds. Based on initial formation and subsequent turn-over of carbohydrates, plants channel energy flux and carbon into specific biosynthetic pathways to optimize growth and development and adapts to environmental challenges by producing bioactive defense compounds when attacked by insects and microbes. Several of these compounds are structurally complex and highly valuable pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of serious human diseases like cancer. Unfortunately such compounds are typically produced in small amounts by plants and sometimes also in plant species difficult to grow on a commercial scale. Most of the pathways responsible for the formation of the compounds involve cytochrome P450 catalyzed key steps difficult to copy using organic chemical synthesis. Using the “share-your- parts” principle of synthetic biology, we have now succeeded in breaking the evolutionary compartmentalization of energy generation and production of bioactive compounds. As proof-of-concept, we have relocated the entire P450 dependent pathway for the cyanogenic glucoside dhurrin to the chloroplast. The P450s were incorporated into the thylakoid membranes and shown to be driven by the reducing power generated by photosystem I with reduced ferredoxin as the electron donor to the P450s. Likewise, it was possible to directly incorporate P450s into the photosystem I reaction center complex by using some of the small subunits of this complex as membrane anchors instead of the native P450 anchors with the long term goal of building a supra-molecular enzyme complex catalysing light driven synthesis of pharmaceuticals and other interesting bioactive molecules. The production systems are being developed and optimised using transient expression in tobacco as the experimental system followed by stable transformation of cyanobacteria and moss strains grown in closed photobioreactors. Key target compounds are structurally complex diterpenoids that are difficult or impossible to synthesise by chemical means.
26 Nov 2012

Event (Conference)

TitleCold Spring Harbor Asia: Synthetic Biology
Date26/11/201230/11/2012
CitySuzhou
Country/TerritoryChina

ID: 41990237