Abstract

Plants evolved complex regulatory networks to fine tune their metabolism and growth in response to continual threats and changes in environments that they cannot simply walk away from. We are investigating the intrinsic and emergent properties of gene regulatory elements, network motifs and, ultimately how phenotypes emerge from network functions. The application of engineering principles to plant biology is enabling us to investigate how the identity, density and position of cis regulatory elements contribute to regulatory function. We have identified permissive architectures for minimal synthetic plant promoters and used our understanding of promoter architecture to enable the computational design of synthetic promoters of predictable strengths. We have also used multi-omics approaches to identify the genetic basis of plant natural products. We combine our knowledge of metabolism and regulation to control relative expression in synthetic biosynthesis pathways, enabling the production of molecules for agriculture and medicine.

Nicola Patron is a research group leader in plant molecular and synthetic biology at the Earlham Institute, an independent bioscience institute on the Norwich Research Park, UK. Her group investigates the plant gene expression and metabolic diversification and applies this knowledge to engineering plants as photosynthetic platforms for biomanufacturing and to improving the yield and nutritional value of crops. Nicola also directs the Earlham Biofoundry, a facility developing automated, nanoscale workflows for biology and biotechnology. Nicola has a PhD in plant molecular biology and pursued postdoctoral research at The John Innes Centre and The University of British Columbia. As a 2015 SynBioLEAP fellow, Nicola was recognized as an emerging leader in synthetic biology

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