Applications
- Discovery and characterization of transcription factors (TFs) in plants
- Functional screening of gene regulatory sequences
- Synthetic biology and crop trait optimization
- High-throughput testing of TF variants for gene activation or repression
Advantages/Benefits
- Enables large-scale simultaneous screening of thousands of transcription factors in plant cells
- Improves accuracy by testing plant sequences directly in plants, versus in microbes
- Rapid identification of strong transcriptional activators and repressors
Background
Transcription factors (TFs) play a central role in regulating plant traits such as growth, stress tolerance, and yield. However, testing their activity in plant cells has been time-consuming and expensive. Often, TF testing is done in non-plant systems like yeast, leading to misleading results. There is a critical need for tools that can evaluate gene function directly in plant cells at high throughput to accelerate trait discovery and crop improvement.
Technology Overview
Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a high-throughput platform that screens up to 2,000 transcription factors (TFs) simultaneously in Nicotiana benthamiana plant cells. Using Agrobacterium, gene libraries are delivered to leaves in a way that ensures each cell expresses only one TF, enabling accurate measurement of individual regulatory effects. These TFs control the expression of a reporter gene tagged for magnetic nucleus sorting, allowing researchers to isolate nuclei based on expression levels. This method uses magnetic nucleus sorting combined with sequencing to efficiently identify gene regulators in plant cells. It enables large-scale screening of transcription factors, outperforming traditional one-at-a-time or microbe-based approaches.
Development Stage
Full-scale prototype
For More Information:
N/A
Principal Investigator
- Simon Alamos
- Patrick M. Shih
Status
Patent pending
Opportunities
Available for licensing and/or collaborative research
