Improve the healthiness of agricultural crops by enabling the reduction and elimination of toxins.

Engineering Biology

Food & Agriculture Challenge:

Increase and improve the nutritional content and value of food.

Improve the healthiness of agricultural crops by enabling the reduction and elimination of toxins.

Engineering Biology Objectives & Technical Achievements

Engineer and improve crops and other agricultural plants to prevent accumulation of heavy metals.¹

Engineering DNA	Biomolecular Engineering	Host Engineering	Data Science
Identify or generate regulators responsive to heavy metals. Identify and remove, or modify specificity of, transporters involved in movement of heavy metals.	Generate compartments or mechanisms for compartmentalization or sequestration and excretion of heavy metals.	Protein modeling to identify putative sites for modification of transporter specificity, selectivity, and activity. Automation in phenotyping.

Engineering DNA

Biomolecular Engineering

Host Engineering

Data Science

Identify or generate regulators responsive to heavy metals.

Identify and remove, or modify specificity of, transporters involved in movement of heavy metals.

Generate compartments or mechanisms for compartmentalization or sequestration and excretion of heavy metals.

Protein modeling to identify putative sites for modification of transporter specificity, selectivity, and activity.

Automation in phenotyping.

Engineer and improve crops to enable reduction and/or elimination of toxins and allergens, such as gluten, peanut-allergen proteins, or other health-affecting factors.

Engineering DNA	Biomolecular Engineering	Host Engineering	Data Science
Generate mutations that delete or modify allergenic proteins or protein domains (such as peanut protein or gluten).	Generate toxin specific sensors, reporters, and transcriptional regulators. Modify metabolic pathways that generate anti-nutrients (such as phytate). Modify endogenous biosynthetic pathways to metabolize or prevent production of toxins.	Engineer mechanisms of sequestration and secretion. Generate compartments, or mechanisms for compartmentalization or sequestration, and subsequent excretion of toxins.	Protein modeling to identify putative sites for modification. Flux analysis for modification of metabolic pathways. Design and model signal perception and response systems for redirecting metabolism.

Engineering DNA

Biomolecular Engineering

Host Engineering

Data Science

Generate mutations that delete or modify allergenic proteins or protein domains (such as peanut protein or gluten).

Generate toxin specific sensors, reporters, and transcriptional regulators.

Modify metabolic pathways that generate anti-nutrients (such as phytate).

Modify endogenous biosynthetic pathways to metabolize or prevent production of toxins.

Engineer mechanisms of sequestration and secretion.

Generate compartments, or mechanisms for compartmentalization or sequestration, and subsequent excretion of toxins.

Protein modeling to identify putative sites for modification.

Flux analysis for modification of metabolic pathways.

Design and model signal perception and response systems for redirecting metabolism.

Improve food bio-processing to prevent and eliminate organic toxins (such as mycotoxins) in post-harvest environments.

Engineering DNA	Biomolecular Engineering	Host Engineering	Data Science
	Identify and engineer enzymes for bioconversion of toxins into non-toxic, consumable degradation products.	Generate microbial or cell-free systems to degrade or sequester toxins.	Protein modeling to identify enzymes with specificity, selectivity and activity for targeting toxins.

Engagement Example

By engineering a reduction in the amount of asparagine in foods, such as potatoes, it is possible to decrease the formation of harmful acrylamides upon processing of those foods. See http://www.innatepotatoes.com for this example in action.

Footnotes

Ali, H., & Khan, E. (2018). Trophic transfer, bioaccumulation, and biomagnification of non-essential hazardous heavy metals and metalloids in food chains/webs—Concepts and implications for wildlife and human health. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 1–24. View publication.
Rai, P. K., Lee, S. S., Zhang, M., Tsang, Y. F., & Kim, K.-H. (2019). Heavy metals in food crops: Health risks, fate, mechanisms, and management. Environment International, 125, 365–385. View publication.
Muthusaravanan, S., Sivarajasekar, N., Vivek, J. S., Paramasivan, T., Naushad, M., Prakashmaran, J., … Al-Duaij, O. K. (2018). Phytoremediation of heavy metals: mechanisms, methods and enhancements. Environmental Chemistry Letters, 16(4), 1–21. View publication.
Fan, W., Guo, Q., Liu, C., Liu, X., Zhang, M., Long, D., … Zhao, A. (2018). Two mulberry phytochelatin synthase genes confer zinc/cadmium tolerance and accumulation in transgenic Arabidopsis and tobacco. Gene, 645, 95–104. View publication.
Nahar, N., Rahman, A., Nawani, N. N., Ghosh, S., & Mandal, A. (2017). Phytoremediation of arsenic from the contaminated soil using transgenic tobacco plants expressing ACR2 gene of Arabidopsis thaliana. Journal of Plant Physiology, 218, 121–126. View publication.