Genes with Roles in the Algal Co2 Concentrating Mechanism, and Others

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This patent describes the discovery and functional characterization of over 700 genes from the green alga Chlamydomonas, many of which are linked to important cellular processes such as photosynthesis, the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrating mechanism, DNA repair, temperature tolerance, nutrient utilization, and cytoskeleton integrity. The patent enables the use of these genes, or their homologs, to genetically modify other organisms (such as crop plants) to endow them with enhanced traits, like increased photosynthetic efficiency, improved stress tolerance (e.g., heat, cold, and nutrient deficiency), and better growth performance. Methods for creating such genetically altered plants and cultivating them are also disclosed.

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• Engineering crop plants (such as rice, wheat, soy, cassava, etc.) to have enhanced photosynthetic efficiency via the algal CO2 concentrating mechanism genes.
• Developing crops with improved tolerance to various stresses, including high/low temperature, drought, or low nutrient (nitrogen, iron, zinc, etc.) conditions by incorporating specific Chlamydomonas genes.
• Producing plants with greater DNA repair capabilities, potentially leading to higher resistance to environmental damage and improved survival rates.
• Improving actin cytoskeleton integrity in land plants, possibly making them more resilient to mechanical and chemical stresses.
• Using these discoveries for synthetic biology applications to build synthetic pyrenoids or engineer new organelles in plants for enhanced CO2 capture.
• Supporting basic research and phenotyping platforms for genotype-to-phenotype mapping in photosynthetic organisms.

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• Potential to significantly increase crop yields by enhancing photosynthetic efficiency, especially in C3 plants that naturally lack an algal CO2 concentrating mechanism.
• Improved plant resilience to a broad spectrum of environmental stresses (e.g., heat, cold, drought, nutrient limitation), which is crucial as climate change creates more challenging growing conditions.
• Possibility to create crops that require less fertilizer due to better nutrient uptake and utilization, reducing environmental impact and farming costs.
• Increased carbon fixation by crops, which could contribute to efforts in carbon sequestration and address climate change.
• Acceleration of plant breeding and biotechnology through systematic genotype-phenotype discovery, enabling targeted improvement of specific traits.
• Flexible genetic engineering methods, allowing use of algal genes directly or modification of native plant genes, broadening the applicability across diverse plant species.

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Patent Abstract

Described herein is a screen of the Chlamydomonas genome that provides more than 700 high confidence gene/phenotype relationships. The identification of these relationships enables use of the genes to influence the correspond phenotype in a heterologous organism, such as a plant or another photosynthetic organism. Additional aspects of the present disclosure provide genetically altered plants having a heterologous polypeptide to which a phenotype is now linked, or having a modified native homolog of that polypeptide (for instance, a knockout or other modification that reduces or increases expression). Other aspects of the present disclosure relate to methods of making such plants, as well as cultivating these genetically altered plants.