{"title":"Engineering Nitrogenases for Synthetic Nitrogen Fixation: From Pathway Engineering to Directed Evolution.","authors":"Emily M Bennett, James W Murray, Mark Isalan","doi":"10.34133/bdr.0005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Globally, agriculture depends on industrial nitrogen fertilizer to improve crop growth. Fertilizer production consumes fossil fuels and contributes to environmental nitrogen pollution. A potential solution would be to harness nitrogenases-enzymes capable of converting atmospheric nitrogen N<sub>2</sub> to NH<sub>3</sub> in ambient conditions. It is therefore a major goal of synthetic biology to engineer functional nitrogenases into crop plants, or bacteria that form symbiotic relationships with crops, to support growth and reduce dependence on industrially produced fertilizer. This review paper highlights recent work toward understanding the functional requirements for nitrogenase expression and manipulating nitrogenase gene expression in heterologous hosts to improve activity and oxygen tolerance and potentially to engineer synthetic symbiotic relationships with plants.</p>","PeriodicalId":56832,"journal":{"name":"生物设计研究(英文)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10521693/pdf/","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"生物设计研究(英文)","FirstCategoryId":"1087","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.34133/bdr.0005","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Agricultural and Biological Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5
Abstract
Globally, agriculture depends on industrial nitrogen fertilizer to improve crop growth. Fertilizer production consumes fossil fuels and contributes to environmental nitrogen pollution. A potential solution would be to harness nitrogenases-enzymes capable of converting atmospheric nitrogen N2 to NH3 in ambient conditions. It is therefore a major goal of synthetic biology to engineer functional nitrogenases into crop plants, or bacteria that form symbiotic relationships with crops, to support growth and reduce dependence on industrially produced fertilizer. This review paper highlights recent work toward understanding the functional requirements for nitrogenase expression and manipulating nitrogenase gene expression in heterologous hosts to improve activity and oxygen tolerance and potentially to engineer synthetic symbiotic relationships with plants.