Recipient Organization
DONALD DANFORTH PLANT SCIENCE CENTER
975 NORTH WARSON ROAD
ST. LOUIS,MO 63132
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
(N/A)
Animal Health Component
10%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
80%
Applied
10%
Developmental
10%
Goals / Objectives
This project aims to develop novel technologies and methodologies to redesign the bioenergy feedstock Sorghum bicolor to enhance water use efficiency and photosynthetic efficiencies. The specific objectives are: Obj. 1: Engineering photosynthesis for improved performance under water stress. Obj. 2: Optimize water relations to enhance drought tolerance and water use efficiency. Obj. 3: Develop a comparative genome-wide association pipeline for sorghum and a model system in Setaria. Obj. 4: Use metabolic network modeling to guide biomass engineering. Obj. 5: Manipulate plant gene expression through precision engineering. Obj. 6: Develop methods to improve transformation efficiencies in sorghum and establish and establish a regulatory framework for deployment of engineered organisms.
Project Methods
The objective of this aim is to identify novel loci underlying drought responsive traits and the interactions between the loci. We will study drought responses in diversity panels in field and controlled conditions using our newly developed phenotyping approaches and link the results to the modeling efforts by other collaborators. This will involve creating a computational infrastructure that will enable rapid comparison of results between the two species, identify functional allelic variation and leverage all available information to predict function. We will conduct screens of the Setaria and Sorghum biomass association panels for phenotypic, photosynthetic and water use variation.Phenotyping experiments will provide the platform for the main biochemical profiling. Using untargeted metabolomics, elemental and isotope profiling of both biomass association panels, we will identify loci underlying biochemical pathways that respond to water limitation and produce data for the biochemical models produced by other collaborators.