I-Corps: Controlling Protein Translation

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is revolutionizing how farmers grow their crops and significantly reduced the dependence on fertilizers or pesticides to maximize yields. Understanding how to manipulate natural components of the plant stress response to provide desirable beneficial traits will potentially lead to reductions in chemical use in agriculture. This technology provides a novel mechanism to express broad spectrum immune response that would normally stunt plant growth. This novel mechanism has large potential societal and commercial impacts. Currently, agricultural companies express resistance genes using promoter systems that are specific for one strain of pathogen. Each resistance gene included in the plant seed results in a negative fitness cost. The technology developed here can potentially eliminate the need to express multiple resistance genes by replacing them with one broad spectrum resistance gene. This I-Corps project further develops a TBF1-Control Cassette technology (TCC) to regulate translation that is both inducible and specific. Current gene expression methods are primarily based on transcriptional regulation utilizing synthetic or native promoters, which were shown to be insufficient in overcoming negative fitness costs associated with expression of stress response genes. The TCC technology remediates these negative fitness cost by "stalling" the translation of the gene of interest until a trigger is present. This mechanism allows for the accumulation of transcripts without the subsequent translation, and hence no negative fitness costs until the protein is translated. The technology was proven to work in rice and can be applied to other economically important crops, such as wheat or corn.