title: Key applications of plant metabolic engineering.
abstract: Great strides have been made in plant metabolic engineering over the last two decades, with notable success stories including Golden rice. Here, we discuss the field's progress in addressing four long-standing challenges: creating plants that satisfy their own nitrogen requirement, so reducing or eliminating the need for nitrogen fertilizer; enhancing the nutrient content of crop plants; engineering biofuel feed stocks that harbor easy-to-access fermentable saccharides by incorporating self-destructing lignin; and increasing photosynthetic efficiency. We also look to the future at emerging areas of research in this field.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Warren
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lau
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Fischbach
authors.affiliation: Department of Metabolic Biology, John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Osbourn
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Elizabeth S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Sattely
mesh_terms: D056804:Biofuels; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D060847:Metabolic Engineering; D009586:Nitrogen Fixation; D010788:Photosynthesis
chemical_list: D056804:Biofuels