Flux Race Investigation for Dissection Of Metabolic-bottlenecks: Leveraging the tremendous potential of algal metabolic diversity

Introduction

A ~70% increase in food production is required to feed the world population by 2050, putting increased productivity on a collision course with environmental and sustainability goals. Aiming to meet this growing demand, photosynthesis-related pathways are regarded as a promising target for crop improvement to increase agricultural yield; however, they remain mostly unexploited.

Background

Furthermore, while empirical studies have shown that photosynthetic efficiency is higher in microalgae than in both C3 or C4 crops, the underlying reasons remain unclear. Identifying metabolic bottlenecks in photosynthetic cells remains a holy grail of plant research.

Recent Advances

However, with recent progress made in cross-kingdom plant flux analyses, the time is ripe to tackle photosynthetic metabolism with state-of-the-art experimental and computational approaches as a target for plant yield improvement.

Key Questions

In this project, I propose to address the following key questions:

1. What role is played by photosynthetic metabolism in setting the upper limits for the growth of photosynthetic cells?
2. What makes some photosynthetic cells grow faster than others?

Methodology

We will combine cutting-edge tools for comparative flux analyses with genetic approaches applied on algae and higher plants to identify and validate metabolic bottlenecks for plant growth as targets for crop yield improvement.

Expertise

These research aims fall well within my unique set of expertise. I’ve characterized the metabolism of the fastest growing photosynthetic cells and mapped the metabolic networks of algae compared with C3 and C4 plant models, using a novel microfluidics setup which I developed, facilitating non-stationary stable isotope analysis at steady state conditions in liquid algal cultures.

Expected Outcomes

The successful outcome of this project will shed light on the magnitude of photosynthetic metabolism effects on plant growth and help reshape the field of targeting photosynthetic-related pathways for crop-plant yield improvements.