Greenprints for the future
By Dr James Levine
Cambridge researchers gathered to explore exciting new advances in plant engineering, from developing rare medicinal compounds in marigolds to boosting photosynthesis rates to enhance carbon capture.
Plants are essential to human life. Yet climate change and environmental degradation puts enormous pressures on the vital ecosystems on which we depend. New technologies are unlocking opportunities for a more sustainable, resilient future by transforming the way we produce food, medicines and manage carbon.
Everything we eat comes directly or indirectly from plants; 80% of the world’s population relies on plant-based medicines while around a quarter of modern medicines are derived from plants; and terrestrial vegetation and soils remove almost a third of global CO2 emissions generated by human activities.
Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation and pressures on global food systems are creating unprecedented strain. Plant engineering enables precise genetic modifications in plant DNA, providing critical solutions to these stressors.
Cambridge Zero partnered with two of the University of Cambridge’s Interdisciplinary Research Centres, Global Food Systems and Engineering Biology, for a research symposium on ‘Plant Engineering for Sustainable Futures’, to examine the invaluable ways plant engineering can be used.
The sell-out event attracted 65 participants from 16 University departments spanning five schools: Physical Sciences, Technology, Clinical Medicine and Humanities and Social Sciences – in addition to Biological Sciences.
Sustainable foods
The first session, with leading academics Dr Jake Harris, Dr Nicola Patron and Dr Caroline Ibe, and doctoral student, Nicolás Garcia Hernandez, outlined how scientists can design and introduce tens, hundreds and even thousands of genes into plant DNA.
Gene editing gives scientists the ability to target and develop precise traits, which can improve crop resilience to challenging environmental conditions, resistance to pests and disease, and promote growth capabilities. With these new tools, the area of land required to grow 250kg of grain is projected to fall from 250m2 in 2018 to just 100m2 by 2035.
Populations in the Global South are some of the most vulnerable to food shortages. Cambridge researchers are working on multiple programmes to look at how these new developments can be used to address shortages in skills, strengthen supply chains and build local capacity to support food systems.
Sustainable medicines
In the second session, Prof Jim Haseloff, Prof Paul Dupree and Dr Connor Tansley provided expert insights into the role of plants in producing medicines and the possibilities of enhancing their nutritional value.
Plant engineering is opening new possibilities for producing medicinal compounds that are difficult to source sustainably. Some naturally occurring medicinal plants are hard to access, while others face pressures of overharvesting. Emerging technologies are making it possible for scientists to biosynthesise target compounds in alternative, readily available plant hosts, such as pot marigolds.
The session also delved into the value of plants as a source of dietary fibres – essential ingredients for healthy gut microbiomes that reduce a wide range of health risks, from the development of certain cancers to poor mental health. Advances in engineering could tailor the types and quantities of fibre available in foods to better meet people’s needs.
Sustainable carbon management
The final session focused on how to enhance the ability of plants to remove carbon from the atmosphere, as well as mechanisms to reduce the emissions associated with crop production, with talks from eminent Cambridge scientists, Dr Noam Prywes, Dr Leonie Luginbuehl, Dr Nadia Radzman and Prof. Erwin Reisner.
Plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere during photosynthesis – the equivalent of around 20% of global CO2 emissions – with the help of an enzyme called rubisco. This removal could be boosted by engineering plants to produce more rubisco. As well as removing CO2, some plants exchange it with fungi in surrounding soils in return for nutrients. New research is exploring how plant engineering can enhance this exchange and promote the flow of carbon from atmosphere to plants to soils.
Unfortunately, fertilisers are often needed to grow crops at scale, and these are responsible for emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Legumes, such as beans and peas, however, require much less and a shift in diets towards this family of plants (also good for gut microbiomes) could reduce these emissions.
The session concluded with a look at how we are starting to emulate the process of photosynthesis, by using sunlight to perform ‘solar chemistry’. Instead of burning fossil fuels, or even using solar panels, technologies are being developed in Cambridge to use sunlight directly to upcycle plastics and biomass waste – supporting a circular, sustainable economy.
The future’s bright, the future’s green. Plants are essential to us, and we now have unprecedented understanding and techniques to modify their DNA to optimise their contributions to sustainable foods, medicines and carbon management.
