Developing a synthetic signal transduction system in plants

One area of focus in the emerging field of plant synthetic biology is the manipulation of systems involved in sensing and response to environmental signals. Sensing and responding to signals, including ligands, typically involves biological signal transduction. Plants use a wide variety of signaling systems to sense and respond to their environment. One of these systems, a histidine kinase (HK) based signaling system, lends itself to manipulation using the tools of synthetic biology. Both plants and bacteria use HKs to relay signals, which in bacteria can involve as few as two proteins (two-component systems or TCS). HK proteins are evolutionarily conserved between plants and bacteria and plant HK components have been shown to be functional in bacteria. We found that this conservation also applies to bacterial HK components which can function in plants. This conservation of function led us to hypothesize that synthetic HK signaling components can be designed and rapidly tested in bacteria. These novel HK signaling components form the foundation for a synthetic signaling system in plants, but typically require modifications such as codon optimization and proper targeting to allow optimal function. We describe the process and methodology of producing a synthetic signal transduction system in plants. We discovered that the bacterial response regulator (RR) PhoB shows HK-dependent nuclear translocation in planta. Using this discovery, we engineered a partial synthetic pathway in which a synthetic promoter (PlantPho) is activated using a plant-adapted PhoB (PhoB-VP64) and the endogenous HK-based cytokinin signaling pathway. Building on this work, we adapted an input or sensing system based on bacterial chemotactic binding proteins and HKs, resulting in a complete eukaryotic signal transduction system. Input to our eukaryotic signal transduction system is provided by a periplasmic binding protein (PBP), ribose-binding protein (RBP). RBP interacts with the membrane-localized chemotactic receptor Trg. PBPs like RBP have been computationally redesigned to bind small ligands, such as the explosive 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). A fusion between the chemotactic receptor Trg and the HK, PhoR, enables signal transduction via PhoB, which undergoes nuclear translocation in response to phosphorylation, resulting in transcriptional activation of an output gene under control of a synthetic plant promoter. Collectively, these components produce a novel ligand-responsive signal transduction system in plants and provide a means to engineer a eukaryotic synthetic signaling system.