Synthetic symbioses for nitrogen-fixing crop plants

Through a multi-component synthetic biology strategy, this team aims to replace nitrogen fertilizer with nitrogen-fixing plants, eliminating gigatons of CO2 associated with fertilizer production and use. Nitrogen is the limiting nutrient for photosynthetic productivity in both natural and agricultural ecosystems, and most plants, including all major cereal species, are dependent on scavenging nitrogen in soil. This team aims to eliminate this dependency by genetically optimizing nitrogen-fixing bacteria for endosymbiosis, intracellularly delivering these bacteria into plant protoplasts, and directing evolution to select for stably integrated hybrid cells.