Spotlight on J-WAFS’ first Grand Challenge project
The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) awards its first Water and Food Grand Challenge Grant to a team of researchers who are working to improve inefficiencies in photosynthesis of crop plants to support climate-resilient agricultural productivity. The team is led by Matt Shoulders and Robert Wilson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) department of chemistry, and includes MIT faculty Mary Gehring, professor of biology, Bin Zhang, associate professor of chemistry, and Bryan Bryson, associate professor of biological engineering, as well as outside collaborators Spencer Whitney from The Australian National University, Ahmed Badran, from the Scripps Research Institute, and Stephen Long, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Our collaborative team of biochemists and synthetic biologists, computational biologists, and chemists is deeply integrated with plant biologists and field trial experts, yielding a robust feedback loop for enzyme engineering,” says Matt. “Together, this team will be able to make a concerted effort using the most modern, state-of-the-art techniques to engineer crop RuBisCO with an eye to helping make meaningful gains in securing a stable crop supply, hopefully with accompanying improvements in both food and water security.”
This year J-WAFS awarded its inaugural Water and Food Grand Challenge Grant to a team who is working to enhance climate-resilient agriculture by improving the most inefficient aspect of photosynthesis in crop plants. Specifically, the research is focusing on ways to enhance the photosynthetic enzyme called Ribulose-1,5-Bisphosphate Carboxylase/Oxygenase (RuBisCO). Professor Matt Shoulders and research scientist Robert Wilson of the Department of Chemistry are leading an interdisciplinary team to build what they call the Enhanced Photosynthesis in Crops (EPiC) platform. The researchers are using state-of-the-art protein engineering techniques drawn from biomedicine to improve the biochemistry of photosynthesis in order to evolve and design better crop RuBisCO in the laboratory.
J-WAFS recently participated in a kickoff event for the grant project, where each researcher on the team described their role in the effort to make photosynthesis more efficient, with the ultimate goal of boosting crop yields. In addition to Shoulders and Wilson, the MIT team includes Bryan Bryson, associate professor of biological engineering; Bin Zhang, associate professor of chemistry; and Mary Gehring, a professor in the Department of Biology and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The team at MIT is working with outside collaborators Spencer Whitney, a professor from The Australian National University, and Ahmed Badran, an assistant professor at the Scripps Research Institute. A milestone-based collaboration will also take place with Stephen Long, a professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Our collaborative team of biochemists and synthetic biologists, computational biologists, and chemists is deeply integrated with plant biologists and field trial experts, yielding a robust feedback loop for enzyme engineering,” says Shoulders. “Together, this team will be able to make a concerted effort using the most modern, state-of-the-art techniques to engineer crop RuBisCO with an eye to helping make meaningful gains in securing a stable crop supply, hopefully with accompanying improvements in both food and water security.”