Meeting and publications- USA Applications of Molecular Biology for the Production of Plants for Biobased Products and Bioenergy

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Biotechnology : International Activities - Other

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Meeting Report Discussion

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From the Discussion

The workshop discussed the concept of the 'Flagship Project ' as a description of an area where more research was required. Although, it was agreed that the concept needs to be formulated more fully, specifically standards on which to evaluate future proposals for flagships studies need to be established. Any proposed flagship project must be realistic both scientifically and economically. It is crucial for the field that the selected Flagship projects accomplish all the necessary goals (direct customer benefit, improvement of public acceptance, societal benefits as well as agricultural and environmental benefits).

The following areas were identified by participants in the group discussion.

A) Scientific Challenges

• Understanding Cell Walls, made modified and degraded, architecture, biomass biology how it is made, manipulation and utilization of lignin, creation of low lignin plants.
• Metabolic Pathways, regulation in the widest sense, impacts of change understand what controls assimilation and allocation of carbon. Impact of environmental stress, barriers to yield a bioproduct. Understanding of compartmentalization within the cell, transfer between compartments. Understanding plant development and architecture and morphogenesis.
• Modification of plant oils in vivo, synthesis of tailor made useful lipids in plants.
• Biocontainment of GM crops, advance the science, safe novel non food crops for industrial bioproducts. Male sterility, GURT mechanisms to block gene flow, quantitative assessment of gene flow, what tools are needed and what amount of containment is technically achievable. Biocontainment with normal yield without tradeoffs in quality or quantity. Identify and develop nonfood/forage crops to use for industrial compound or biopolymer production.
• Understanding abiotic stress tolerance to better utilize marginal lands and cope with future climate change. Develop hardier plants adapted to marginal environments.
• New high energy carbon molecule/bioproduct
• Knowledge of exploitable plant and microbe biodiversity/germplasm, to make those available for further research and development of bioproducts.
• Improving microbe fermentation. Improving efficiency/conversion rate and reducing the limitations.
• Microbial technology for complete plant hydrolysis and conversion.
• Parity production yield mechanisms, sustainatability and studies of the processes.
• Structure function relationship in biomaterials.
• Improving biomaterial processing technologies for extraction from 10-15% purity. Maximize production and extraction/recovery techniques to make it feasible to produce more bioproducts from crops which accumulate limited amounts/purity of the material.
• Maximizing production, recovery and purification of recombinant proteins in plants.
• Stability and predicatability of transgenic gene expression in crops, efficient gene integration.
• Consistent bioproduct supply resource, not as dependent on the seasons. OK if the seed is the starting material (store grain in silos, but may be a limitation with other biomaterials that are not easily stored for long periods of time.
• to yield a bioproduct. compartmeritalization within between compartments. plant development and morphogenesis.
• Integrative systems biology, integration of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics for systems biology of the whole plant in its environment. Global picture of the plant system as a whole.

B) New Research Tools Needed

• Develop tools to speed up genetic modification in plants, accelerate genetic engineering, change constructs/promoters quickly, improve the transformation technology to make it more simple and rapid (higher throughput) and develop the technology for novel species. Improve TILLING, gene knock-out technology and develop novel tools that can be used to quickly identify interesting alleles. Be able to carefully and precisely control gene expression.
• Bioinformatics or modeling metabolism in plants like what is available for microbial systems,e.g. E. coli. Bioinformatic tools to predict the metabolic flux for bioproduct production. This is complicated in eukaryotic systems due to the issue of compartmentalization and transport between subcellular locations.
• Create a mechanism (e.g., database) to make the information and tools needed by researchers available to aid their decisions to pursue areas that can lead to viable business opportunities in the future. This mechanism should help scientific researchers determine whether their area of research is a viable choice for the future business applications and identify the barriers to bioproduct development. This information should be easily accessible so that researchers can investigate these downstream issues and avoid potential pitfalls as well as use basic research to address problem areas and where research has the potentially to uncover innovative solutions to
• Technology to do systems biology, one stop shopping, one tool to look at RNA. proteins, metabolomics from a single extraction (at the same time within the same sample).
• Develop high resolution methods and quantitative analysis for all plant metabolites.
• Develop better microanalytical methods for single cell (or small groups of cells) sampling.
• Develop methodologies, tools and reagents for structural analysis of cell walls and rapid and precise methods for analysis of cell wall components, linkages within and between polymers.
• Large-scale rapid genomic analysis, particularly for novel potentially useful species. Develop rapid technologies to create genetic maps and identify the genes responsible for interesting and novel traits.
• Improving protein microarrays and proteomics technology.
• High throughput, accurate and precise, plant phenotyping techniques useful for all kinds of traits.

C) Nontechnical Barriers

• Public-Private partnerships to bring technology forward. Stimulate bio-entrepreneurship.
• Creation of value chains, including farmers and agronomists, target lead choices, knowing where the decision points are.
• Appropriate Regulatory Framework GM and bioproducts. Mechanisms to encourage interaction between the scientific community and the regulators.
• Preemptive approach to positively influence public perception concerning GM crops and bioproducts. Identify and initiate a flagship (Icebreaker) project, which clearly demonstrates the utility of this field. It must include production of a product that exhibits a direct tangible benefit for the customer, as well as society and the environment (and potentially other things). It should increase the overall public awareness and understanding of the substantial benefits provided by GM technology.
• Long-term strategic research programs need sufficient funding. Funding has to be long term in order to allow full development of projects and technology transfer to private industry which can successfully bring the bioproduct to market.
• Intellectual Property, protection and management. Enabling a freedom to operate for starting companies, Patent pools for basic needed tools. Increase the understanding of researchers so that they consider and incorporate the development of these issues while research is being conducted, because IP rights are a prerequisite to business development of any new product. Reduce the amount of redundant research that takes place just to circumvent patent restrictions.
• Realistic expectations by funding agencies, politicians and the public concerning research in this area. They need to acknowledge the amount of time and money necessary for the realization of the goal of researching and developing a novel biporoduct.
• The incredibly high cost of bringing a new bioproduct to market is a significant barrier. It makes small niche markets not a profitable option for companies. There exists intense competition between start-up companies for capital.
• Difficulty to predict the market for a new product, and lack of a visionary approach, thinking outside the box. Instead of just thinking about how bioproducts can replace fossil fuel derived energy and products, research should address what novel bioproducts can be developed.
• Getting multidisciplinary research teams together nationally/internationally. Co-funding. Increase international collaboration.
• Price including taxation and true cost of petrochemicals. Environmental, life cycle cost of oil.
• Stimulate a human talent pool. Attracting, training and supporting new talent in this field. Students with interdisciplinary training.
• Interactions with the press; "negatives and fear sells'.

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