CAM species can achieve annual above-ground productivities comparable to those of the most water-use efficient C3 or C4 crops with only 20% of the water required for cultivation
To meet 36 billion gal/year of biofuels by 2022, improved bioenergy feedstock production will depend on the introduction and expansion of new crops and the production of crops in more marginal land areas.
Our vision is to understand the enzymatic and regulatory pathways required for CAM in order to engineer CAM photosynthetic machinery into Populus
Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) is a photosynthetic CO2 fixation pathway that maximizes water use efficiency (WUE) many times relative to C3 species by using a temporal CO2 pump. Thus, CAM provides an excellent opportunity to engineer both enhanced photosynthetic performance and WUE into bioenergy crops. The proposed research will provide a comprehensive understanding of the enzymatic and regulatory pathways required to engineer CAM photosynthetic machinery into Populus. The methods employed will include deep transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) and high-throughput metabolic profiling of leaf mesophyll cells and stomatal guard cells to identify regulators of the nocturnal opening and daytime closure of stomata that underpins the high WUE of CAM plants in order to create co-expression models. Additional deep genome sequencing combined with chromatin-immunoprecipitation (ChIP-Seq) experiments will be conducted to characterize the transcriptional regulatory networks needed for the circadian clock regulation of CAM. Once characterized, metabolic pathway components of 'carboxylation' and 'decarboxylation' modules will be assembled using an iterative cloning system, and CAM modules will be assembled singly and in combination into a predefined single locus of the target plant genome. Modules will be expressed under the control of circadian clock controlled, drought-inducible promoters in both the readily transformable model Arabidopsis and the important bioenergy crop Populus to promote maximal productivity. Resulting plants will be tested under both control and drought stress conditions for transgene expression, biochemical signatures of CAM, CO2 assimilation, stomatal conductance and transpiration rates, leaf carbon balance, level/mode of CAM activity, biomass productivity and quality, and integrated WUE.
April 9-13, 2018 Biology of CAM Plants Conference. Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, AZ. Registration will be available in September 2017. View Website.
February 6-8, 2017 Genomic Science Contractors– Grantees Meeting and USDA-DOE Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy Meeting XV. The CAM Biodesign Project was represented by two posters. View Abstracts.
January 14-18, 2017 Plant & Animal Genome XXV: The meeting was held at the Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA. John Cushman co-chaired a workshop on "Functional Genomics of C4 and CAM Photosynthesis." View Program.
March 6-9, 2016 Genomic Science Contractors– Grantees Meeting and USDA-DOE Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy Meeting XIV. The project was represented by five posters. View Abstracts.
January 8-13, 2016 Plant & Animal Genome XXIV: The meeting was held at the Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA. The CAM Biodesign project was represented by four oral presentations, five posters and a workshop. Search Abstracts.
February 22-25, 2015 DOE awardee meeting: The meeting was held at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center. The project was represented by three posters. View program.
January 10-14, 2015 Plant & Animal Genome XXIII: The meeting was held at the Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, USA. This project was represented by oral presentations by Paul Abraham, Jerry Jenkins and Won Yim, as well as five posters. Search Abstracts.
July 15-18, 2014 -34th New Phytologist Symposium: CAMBioDesign researchers will be participating in the event Event Link
February 10-12, 2014 DOE awardee meeting: The meeting was held February at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center. John Cushman presented at this event and the project was represented by three posters. View program.
February 24-27, 2013 DOE awardee meeting: The meeting was held February 24th-27th at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center. John Cushman presented at this event. View program.
August 6-9, 2013 - Annual meeting 2013: C4/CAM meeting was held in U. of Illinois Campus Conf. Center, Aug. 6-9, 2013; A conference room of our CAM satellite Meeting Aug. 6; C4 Rice Eng. Meeting on Aug. 10). View Flyer
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Post-Doctoral Research Associate Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Plant Systems Biology and Synthetic Biology. The Plant Systems Biology group is seeking a postdoctoral researcher with experience in plant synthetic biology, genome editing, molecular biology, molecular genetics, and biochemistry. For more information contact Xiaohan Yang, [email protected]. Posted: August 7, 2016
