Agricultural Biotechnology

Background

The successful acquisition of agronomic traits depends on strong and robust expression of the gene conferring the trait, either in response to an environmental stimulus or in a specific plant tissue. Thus, the choice of promoter contributes to the efficiency of new breeding techniques and the accessibility of powerful traits. Gene expression driven by stress-induced, tissue- or developmental stage-specific promoters increases yields and protects non-target plant species. For example, drought-inducible promoters can be used to drive genes mediating salt or drought tolerance. Similarly, plant-pathogen inducible promoters can be employed to enhance disease resistance and increase crop yields.

Why Plant Synthetic Promoters

Currently, the available choice of effective tissue-specific or condition-responsive promoters across crop species is very limited and is the major bottleneck that constrains rapid progress of new breeding techniques. Promoters have often only been validated in single species and their broad application across multiple crop species remains limited.

Our Solution

ChromatinBio design strong plant synthetic promoters that can either be customized to a particular crop or plant tissue, or broadly active across multiple plant species. Also, by analyzing the chromatin of the crop plants in response to environmental stress or pathogen infection, we can create synthetic promoters optimized to mediate high expression levels in response to some types of stress or disease.