Matteo Gionfriddo

🏊‍♂️🚴‍♂️🏃‍♂️ Triathlete | 🇮🇹 Made in Italy

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

Laboratory evolution of Rubisco solubility and catalytic switches to enhance plant productivity @NaturePlants 👇
https://t.co/HiB0e9qNYt

[Nature Plants @NaturePlants]

New Article: "Laboratory evolution of Rubisco solubility and catalytic switches to enhance plant productivity" https://t.co/DyhbE7xNXS

E. coli evolution screen to unlock latent functional potential in Rubisco by identifying mutations that enhance CO2 fixation and solubility.

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

Rubisco is (arguably) the most abundant protein on Earth. (LPP surely comes close, right?) It’s an enzyme that fixes CO₂ into sugars during photosynthesis.

Unfortunately, as most people learn in school, Rubisco is inefficient. Sometimes it confuses O₂ for CO₂ and wastes energy. Plants make up for this in raw concentration; up to half the soluble protein in a leaf is Rubisco.

People have been trying to engineer better Rubiscos for many decades, but it's not easy because the proteins are big, do not fold easily (they need chaperone proteins to help out), are made from 16 subunits in land plants.

But there's a new paper in Nature Plants that looks really interesting. The TL;DR is that a group in Australia figured out how to express plant Rubiscos (and all SEVEN of their folding chaperones) using a set of 3 plasmids inside of E. coli cells. This enabled them to do "directed evolution" of Rubisco in bacterial cells, and quickly find Rubisco mutants that have higher enzymatic efficiency or that fold better.

In addition to the 3 plasmids, the researchers also coaxed E. coli to make ribulose-1,5-biphosphate, or RuBP, which is the 5-carbon sugar that Rubisco smashes into carbon dioxide to make molecules of 3-PGA for central metabolism.

Now, the clever bit is that you RANDOMLY MUTATE the three plasmids encoding the Rubisco to make millions of variants. Then, you transform those mutated plasmids into E. coli. If the E. coli do NOT make a functional Rubisco, RuBP levels build up and kill the cell; the molecule becomes toxic. But if the E. coli DO make a functional Rubisco, then they keep the RuBP levels in check and live just fine.

Using this "screening assay," the researchers found 46 fast-growing colonies of E. coli. Two of those colonies encoded really useful mutations. One mutation (M116L) makes Rubisco about 25–40% faster. The other (A242V) makes it fold and assemble much more efficiently.

They put this mutation into a "hybrid Arabidopsis–tobacco Rubisco," put that into tobacco plants, and measured growth. The plants with M116L grew 75% faster than wildtype.

No guarantees this will scale to more useful crops, like wheat and corn and soybeans etc. But it seems like a nice in vitro assay for faster prototyping!

[FEBS Letters @FEBS_Letters]

✳️New outstanding Graphical Review: The challenge of engineering #Rubisco for improving #photosynthesis

🖊️M. Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz, K. Zang, M. Hayer-Hartl @HayerHartl @MPI_Biochem

➡️https://t.co/IOav1G7ztL

#molecular_chaperones #folding #assembly #directed_evolution

[Nature Plants @NaturePlants]

New Article: "Grafting Rhodobacter sphaeroides with red algae Rubisco to accelerate catalysis and plant growth" https://t.co/EvCSFqw4tF

Structure-guided changes from a very effective red algae Rubisco into a bacterial enzyme improves its CO2-fixing traits and growth in tobacco.

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

@botbml Thanks Ben!!😎

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

Perspectives on improving crop Rubisco by directed evolution https://t.co/f1uOaYaLQj

[PNAS Nexus @PNASNexus]

Researchers working on the potato have swapped out an enzyme at the heart of photosynthesis, Rubisco, for a faster version but only in high CO2 environments. The authors say a 30% increase in spud yield may eventually be possible. In PNAS Nexus: https://t.co/CO9l8gZCBY

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

@JXBot That cake doesn't look very appetizing…🤨

[JXB @jxbotany.bsky.social @JXBot]

Here's @sal_buck discussing her recent JXB paper which used an E. coli based expression system as a proxy to test heterologous Rubisco production in plants

Read the full paper here: https://t.co/3KvfOhExBJ

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

@JXBot @sal_buck 😍👏👏🫶

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

Escherichia coli expressing chloroplast chaperones as a proxy to test heterologous Rubisco production in leaves https://t.co/ykHajkHUkh

[Wasim A Iqbal, PhD @waz_147]

I am excited to share a new paper.

It demonstrates machine learning can predict kinetics of numerous plant Rubiscos. This will ease bioengineering efforts and may allow species-specific parameterization of global photosynthesis models. 1/5

@JXBot
https://t.co/brkDoSsfOc

[Harvey Millar @ahmillar9]

Nice overview of directed evolution research underway in plants. DE means we don't need to always know what AAs to change, but we do need to understand mechanisms of what is to design clever selection screens for what could be. Enzyme biochemistry in plants needed more than ever!

[Andrew D Hanson Lab @ADHansonLab]

Neat ‘DE-GE’ acronym (#DirectedEvolution-#GenomeEditing) captures how classical & continuous versions of directed evolution will interface w/ crop improvement, i.e. Take gene out of crop -> Evolve fast in a microbial platform -> Put modified gene back in crop by genome editing.

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

Ciao Piero, grazie di tutto…😢❤️

[SuperQuarkRai @SuperQuarkRai]

“Cari amici, mi spiace non essere più con voi dopo 70 anni assieme”
Leggi la lettera di #PieroAngela👉https://t.co/1Mxz0Rabbz

#13agosto

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

“It’s clear that for the future generation, we have to act now in a very fast way.”

- 2021 physics laureate Giorgio Parisi speaks about the current climate situation at this morning's #NobelPrize press conference.

[ARC CoETP @leaf2field]

Watch how @leaf2field scientists are tackling one of the biggest challenges of this century: increasing crop production by improving photosynthesis. Research funding needs to continue so we can apply these exciting discoveries into crop varieties More: https://t.co/AvD88WA7WG

[ED LOPEZ COLLAZO @ELCOLLAZO]

Esta es la caricatura q debimos ver hoy si el mundo fuera justo.

[Matteo Gionfriddo @MatGioLaz]

@ENEAOfficial @unitusviterbo @CREA_Ricerca @Tg1Raiofficial Grande Gianfranco!!!