Building customizable auto-luminescent luciferase-based reporters in plants

eLife

Colby G Starker¹  Ryan Swanson¹  Arjun Khakhar¹  Daniel F Voytas¹  Sydney Stokke¹  Furva Rizvi¹  James C Chamness¹  Cecily Wang¹  Nayoung Lee²  Takato Imaizumi² 

[1] Department Genetics, Cell Biology, & Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States;Center for Precision Plant Genomics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, United States;Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, United States;

关键词: bioluminescence;    luciferase;    Nicotiana benthamiana;    hormone reporters;    expression reporter;    plant synthetic biology;    A. thaliana;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.52786

来源: publisher

【 摘 要 】

Bioluminescence is a powerful biological signal that scientists have repurposed as a reporter for gene expression in plants and animals. However, there are downsides associated with the need to provide a substrate to these reporters, including its high cost and non-uniform tissue penetration. In this work we reconstitute a fungal bioluminescence pathway (FBP) in planta using a composable toolbox of parts. We demonstrate that the FBP can create luminescence across various tissues in a broad range of plants without external substrate addition. We also show how our toolbox can be used to deploy the FBP in planta to build auto-luminescent reporters for the study of gene-expression and hormone fluxes. A low-cost imaging platform for gene expression profiling is also described. These experiments lay the groundwork for future construction of programmable auto-luminescent plant traits, such as light driven plant-pollinator interactions or light emitting plant-based sensors.

【 授权许可】

CC BY