title: Synthetic Botany.
abstract: Plants are attractive platforms for synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. Plants' modular and plastic body plans, capacity for photosynthesis, extensive secondary metabolism, and agronomic systems for large-scale production make them ideal targets for genetic reprogramming. However, efforts in this area have been constrained by slow growth, long life cycles, the requirement for specialized facilities, a paucity of efficient tools for genetic manipulation, and the complexity of multicellularity. There is a need for better experimental and theoretical frameworks to understand the way genetic networks, cellular populations, and tissue-wide physical processes interact at different scales. We highlight new approaches to the DNA-based manipulation of plants and the use of advanced quantitative imaging techniques in simple plant models such asMarchantia polymorpha.These offer the prospects of improved understanding of plant dynamics and new approaches to rational engineering of plant traits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EA, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Christian R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Boehm
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EA, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Bernardo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pollak
authors.affiliation: The IBM Place I, Singapore, 486072, Singapore.
authors.forename: Nuri
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Purswani
authors.affiliation: Earlham Institute, Norwich NR4 7UG, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Patron
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EA, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Haseloff
mesh_terms: D001901:Botany / Q000379:methods*; D002736:Chloroplasts / Q000235:genetics; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000378:metabolism; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*; D014170:Transformation, Genetic