Challenges and Future Directives of Synthetic Biology in Engineering Plant-Microbe Partnerships for Sustainable...

Synthetic biology has recently proven to be a valuable tool for enhancing agriculture even in the face of environmental and biological stresses. Understanding the challenges that militate synthetic biology will assist in ensuring safe, stable, and scalable crop production. Thus, we examined the challenges limiting synthetic biology applications in engineering plant-microbe partnerships and highlighted future research directions. Ecological, biological, technical, and regulatory barriers to synthetic biology-driven plant-microbe engineering are the challenges examined in this review. Profound insight into these challenges will lead to a shift toward systems-level approaches that integrate multiomics analyses, predictive modeling, and framework-responsive genetic designs. To completely translate synthetic biology from the laboratory to the field, improved delivery methods, monitoring strategies, and harmonized regulatory frameworks should be encouraged. In addition, the development of robust and controllable microbial chassis should be emphasized.