Objective
This proposed project consists of a multi-disciplinary approach to genetically modify the lysine, methionine and cystine content of plants in order to optimise sink-source interactions to ultimately improve potato and maize crop quality. An integrated approach has been designed, combining different sets of manipulations backed up by a comprehensive biochemical analysis of the generated alterations. The analysis will consider especially the impact of overproduction of the amino acids on whole plant physiology and development.The laboratories participating to this project, intend to focus on the regulation of the amino acids derived from aspartate (lysine, threonine, methionine) as well as cystine, the sulphur donor of methionine. This allows to build up a co-operative, integrated programme to elucidate the biochemical and molecular regulation of the biosynthetic enzymes of the aspartate and sulphur amino acid pathways with respect to developmental patterns, tissue and organ specific expression, induction or repression by exogenous stimuli and cross pathway interaction. Overproduction of essential amino acids and improved nutritional quality will be achieved by expressing chimeric genes of plant, fungal and bacterial origin and/or by antisensing plant genes. Coexpression in sink tissues (as tubers or seeds) of genes encoding biosynthetic enzymes and novel sink proteins (rich in lysine or methionine) will increase protein production and reduce the turnover of overproduced free amino acids.
This programme focusses on potato and maize as target crop plants for increasing the content of essential amino acids in their respective storage organs.
The main points of this proposal can be defined as follows:
1) Detailed molecular analysis of genes encoding enzymes involved in synthesis and catabolism of aspartate-derived and sulphur containing amino acids.
2) Comparative studies in wild type and transgenic plants concerning regulation of gene expression (e.g.tissue and organ specificity, developmental, hormonal, environmental and stress control).
3) Manipulation of the amino acid production by overexpressing and antisensing single and combinations of bacterial and plant genes encoding aspartate-fami and cystine biosynthetic enzymes. Analysis of the impact of these manipulations on plant physiology and development.
4) Targeting amino acid overproduction to storage organs such as tubers and grains, using organ-specific promoters.
5) Improvement of sink strength for the overproduced essential amino acids by providing new sinks (storage proteins).
6) Enhancing accumulation of free amino acids in the storage organs by reducing their catabolism.
7) Evaluation of the nutritional value of transgenic lines with respect to their wild types, this by analysing amino acid and protein content, enzyme activities and metabolic distribution.
8) Development of elite commercial maizie lines with improved nutritional value Production of industrial potato varieties yielding high essential amino acid protamylase.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences basic medicine physiology
- natural sciences chemical sciences organic chemistry amines
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules proteins enzymes
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture grains and oilseeds cereals
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture horticulture vegetable growing root crops
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
1640 Rhode-Saint-Genèse
Belgium
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.