• HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Thursday, May 19, 2022
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

Insights from algae genes unlock mysteries of plant growth and health

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
May 11, 2022
in Science News
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Genes contain all the instructions an organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce. But identifying a gene and learning what it does are two different things. Scientists don’t know what kinds of instructions many genes contain— their functions are unknown. A new study led by UC Riverside, Princeton University, and Stanford University has discovered the functions of hundreds of genes in algae, some of which are also present in plants. The achievement will help efforts to genetically engineer algae for biofuel production and develop strains of agricultural crops that can withstand climate change.

Algae flasks

Credit: Robert Jinkerson/UCR

Genes contain all the instructions an organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce. But identifying a gene and learning what it does are two different things. Scientists don’t know what kinds of instructions many genes contain— their functions are unknown. A new study led by UC Riverside, Princeton University, and Stanford University has discovered the functions of hundreds of genes in algae, some of which are also present in plants. The achievement will help efforts to genetically engineer algae for biofuel production and develop strains of agricultural crops that can withstand climate change.

“Plant and algae genetics are understudied. These organisms make the foods, fuels, materials, and medicines that modern society relies on, but we have a poor understanding of how they work, which makes engineering them a difficult task,” said corresponding author Robert Jinkerson, an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at UC Riverside. “A common way to learn more about biology is to mutate genes and then see how that affects the organism. By breaking the biology we can see how it works.”

The researchers used algal mutants and automated tools to perform experiments that generated millions of data points. Analysis of these datasets allowed the researchers to learn the functional role of hundreds of poorly characterized genes and to discover many new functions of previously known genes. These genes have roles in photosynthesis, DNA damage response, heat stress response, response to toxic chemicals, and response to algal predators. 

Several of the genes they discovered in algae have counterparts in plants with the same roles, indicating that the algal data can help scientists understand how those genes function in plants as well.

Automated approaches to analyzing tens of thousands of mutants quickly, known as high-throughput methods, are typically used to understand gene function on a genome-wide scale in model systems like yeast and bacteria. This is quicker and more efficient than studying each gene individually. High-throughput methods do not work very well in crop plants, however, because of their larger size and the difficulty of analyzing thousands of plants.

The researchers therefore used a high-throughput robot to generate over 65,000 mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a single-celled green algae closely related to plants and easy to alter genetically. They subjected the mutants to 121 different treatments, which resulted in a dataset of 16.8 million data points. Each mutant had a unique DNA barcode that the team could read to see how that mutant was doing in a specific environmental stress condition. 

The group discovered new gene function in hundreds of genes. For example, they learned that a gene widely found throughout multicellular organisms helps repair damaged DNA. Another 38 genes, when disrupted, caused problems with using energy from light, indicating that these genes played roles in photosynthesis. 

Yet another cluster of genes helped the algae process carbon dioxide, a second crucial step in photosynthesis. Other clusters affected the tiny hairs, or cilia, the algae use to swim. This discovery could lead to a better understanding of some human lung and esophageal cancers, which might be partially caused by defective cilia motility. 

A newly discovered gene cluster protected the algae from toxins that inhibit cytoskeleton growth. These genes are also present in plants and the discovery could help scientists develop plants that grow well even in some contaminated soils. 

Many of the gene functions discovered in algae are also conserved in plants. This information can be used to engineer plants to be more tolerant to heat or cold stress, temperature stress, or improve photosynthesis, all of which will become increasingly important as climate change threatens the world’s food supply. 

A better understanding of algae genetics will also improve engineering strategies to make them produce more products, like biofuels.

“The data and knowledge generated in this study is already being leveraged to engineer algae to make more biofuels and to improve environmental stress tolerance in crops,” said Jinkerson.

The research team also included: Sean Cutler at UC Riverside; Friedrich Fauser, Weronika Patena, and Martin C Jonikas at Princeton University; Josep Vilarrasa-Blasi, Masayuki Onishi, and José R Dinneny at Stanford University: Rick Kim, Yuval Kaye, Jacqueline Osaki, Matthew Millican, Charlotte Philp, Matthew Nemeth, and Arthur Grossman at Carnegie Institution; Silvia Ramundo and Peter Walter at UCSF; Setsuko Wakao, Krishna Niyogi, and Sabeeha Merchant at UC Berkeley; and Patrice A Salomé at UCLA.

The research was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The open access paper, “Systematic characterization of gene function in the photosynthetic alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii,” is published in Nature Genetics and available here.



Journal

Nature Genetics

DOI

10.1038/s41588-022-01052-9

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Systematic characterization of gene function in the photosynthetic alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Article Publication Date

5-May-2022

COI Statement

J.V.-B., F.F., M.C.J. and R.E.J. note that a provisional patent application (US 63/123,422) on aspects of these findings has been submitted to the USPTO. The other authors declare no competing interests.

Share12Tweet7Share2ShareShareShare1

Related Posts

GFP of rare codons in fruit fly embryo

Fly researchers find another layer to the code of life

May 19, 2022
Tarek Gebrael

New thermal management technology for electronic devices reduces bulk while improving cooling

May 19, 2022

Oncotarget | Anti-cancer drug profiling with CancerOmicsNet

May 19, 2022

DAP array casts a wide net to fix mutations

May 19, 2022

POPULAR NEWS

  • Weybourne Atmospheric Observatory

    Breakthrough in estimating fossil fuel CO2 emissions

    46 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 12
  • Hidden benefit: Facemasks may reduce severity of COVID-19 and pressure on health systems, researchers find

    44 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 11
  • Discovery of the one-way superconductor, thought to be impossible

    43 shares
    Share 17 Tweet 11
  • Sweet discovery could drive down inflammation, cancers and viruses

    43 shares
    Share 17 Tweet 11

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Tags

VaccineZoology/Veterinary ScienceUrogenital SystemWeaponryUrbanizationVaccinesUniversity of WashingtonVirologyWeather/StormsViolence/CriminalsVirusVehicles

Recent Posts

  • Fly researchers find another layer to the code of life
  • New thermal management technology for electronic devices reduces bulk while improving cooling
  • Oncotarget | Anti-cancer drug profiling with CancerOmicsNet
  • DAP array casts a wide net to fix mutations
  • Contact Us

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Posting....