Metabolic Engineering of Plants to Produce Precursors (Phloroglucinol and 1,2,4-butanetriol) of Energetic Materials.

摘要

Conventional chemical-based synthesis of energetic materials uses toxic ingredients and produces many environmentally undesirable wastes. In addition, chemical-based production is not sustainable since many of the chemicals used in making these precursors are petroleum-based. An alternative to this is to produce precursors of energetic materials using a bio-based approach. Recently, significant progress has been made in identifying the genes and enzymes in some microbes that can produce precursors of energetic materials. This knowledge can now be exploited to use plants for producing precursors of energetic materials in a sustainable manner. The focus of our project is to use bacterial enzymes to engineer plant metabolism to produce precursors of energetic materials. The specific objectives of this proposal are: (1) Metabolic engineering of plants to produce high levels of phloroglucinol by introducing a bacterial gene that converts malonyl Co-A to phloroglucinol into plants; (2) Metabolic engineering of plants to produce butanetriol. This will be accomplished by introducing bacterial genes involved in butanetriol synthesis from xylose and arabinose; (3) To develop regeneration and robust stable transformation technologies for Miscanthus to introduce and express genes involved in synthesis of energetic materials.