NSF Award
2435360
This award is funded by NSF Global Centers program, an innovative partnership with other funding agencies in Canada, Finland, Japan, Republic of Korea, and the United Kingdom, to jointly support use-inspired research addressing global challenges through the bioeconomy. These partnerships leverage resources to tackle challenges at a larger scale than would be possible for one funding agency alone. This Center is jointly supported by NSF Office or International Science and Engineering and the Directorate for Biological Sciences, the Research Council of Finland and Business Finland, Japan Science and Technology Agency, and UK Research and Innovation.<br/><br/>Faster progress towards a sustainable bioeconomy is essential to reduce carbon emissions and ensure the production of cleaner energy. One key goal is improving feedstock-crop performance and resilience. Plant lipids store substantial energy that can be easily converted into fuels and other products. However, feedstock crops need to have greater energy density, increased resilience to environmental stresses and higher yields. Here, the Global Center for "Alliance for Socially-Acceptable & Actionable Plants" (ASAP) exploits natural biodiversity in gene sequences to engineer crops with increased lipid content and greater water use efficiency (WUE). WUE is the ratio of biomass produced relative to water used. It is determined by stomata, small pores on leaves that balance CO2 uptake with water loss. This transformational advancement integrates recent breakthroughs in genetics, protein modelling, synthetic biology, AI, and biotechnology. It draws on the expertise of a multi-disciplinary team of scientists from four countries. ASAP also investigates attitudes among stakeholder groups toward biotechnology to achieve sustainability goals. The project directly leverages natural biodiversity across the tree of life. It employs a biofoundry and artificial intelligence tools to accelerate the crop improvement cycle. It trains the next generation of scientist expert in this field. Public and industry engagement strengthen its technological enterprise, accounting for consumer attitudes and market preferences. The project also provides support and training to undergraduate and graduate students at University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign, and to postdoctoral associates at bot University of Illinois and Stony Brook University. <br/><br/>Progress towards improving feedstock crops for a viable bioeconomy is limited by the slow speed of the design-build-test-learn (DBTL) cycle and the urgent need to discover genetic variants that confer trait improvements. ASAP delivers a synthetic biology solution to produce high-energy, water use efficient crops by: 1) genomic screening of diverse natural variation to identify amino acid changes likely to improve oil production (lipid biosynthesis) or WUE (via stomatal characteristics); 2) using AI-based modelling of protein structure to predict enzyme properties to prioritize functioning gene variants; 3) developing deep-learning models to predict plant regulatory protein-DNA binding; 4) testing targets using the biofoundry to build genetic designs; 5) gene function testing using robotic and AI driven phenotyping. A key part of ASAP is reducing the gap in understanding of societal attitudes towards gene edited products for the bioeconomy. Consumer attitudes and market preferences will be evaluated using multi-national surveys, whilst emotional responses are examined via cognitive image elicitation. Translation of successful genetic designs into productive crops is facilitated by engagement of a Stakeholder Advisory Board, whilst broad impacts are realized through the development of new technologies and training of a diverse bioeconomy workforce.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
