Engineering Root Traits for Climate Change Mitigation

By Wolfgang Busch

Abstract : Climate change will soon profoundly and negatively affect the vast majority of our planet’s biota, including most human beings. Despite the importance and urgency of addressing this problem, we still lack technologies to globally address the root cause of climate change – increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Since plants are central agents in the earth’s carbon cycle, fixing atmospheric carbon that then mostly gets released when they decompose, engineering plant traits that affect the decomposition rate of plant derived carbon molecules can potentially lead to a large and globally significant drawdown of atmospheric CO2.
In particular, root systems and the rhizosphere are of interest for such approaches as soils are enormous carbon sinks. Since plants first colonized the earth’s land surfaces, their carbon depositions have built up three times more carbon in the soil than is contained in the atmosphere. Specific root traits are important contributors to the accumulation and permanence of carbon in the soil. These include root depth, root biomass and the levels of refractory carbon compounds in root tissues.

I will present our efforts in using natural variation, genome wide association mapping, chemical genetics and functional genomics approaches in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and several crop species to identify genetic and molecular mechanisms that regulate these traits and attempt to utilize this knowledge to enhance traits relating to carbon accumulation and permanence in soils.

https://inrae-fr.zoom.us/j/99106050077?pwd=oM31Ond6NaIVdaA1KibYlQ4jbcaA2l.1 
ID de réunion : 991 0605 0077 
Code secret : Tulip24WB! 

Related publications :

• Eckardt NA, Ainsworth EA, Bahuguna RN, Broadley MR, Busch W, Carpita NC, Castrillo G, Chory J, DeHaan LR, Duarte CM, Henry A, Jagadish SVK, Langdale J, Leakey ADB, Liao JC, Lu KJ, McCann MC, McKay JK, Odeny DA, Olivieira E, Platten JD, Rabbi I, Rim EY, Ronald PC, Salt DE, Shigenaga AM, Wang E, Wolfe M, Zhang X. Climate change challenges, plant science solutions. Plant Cell. 2022 Oct 12:koac303. doi: 10.1093/plcell/koac303. PMID: 36222573.
• He W, Truong HA, Zhang L, Cao M, Arakawa N, Xiao Y, Zhong K, Hou Y, Busch W. (2024) Identification of Mebendazole as an ethylene signaling activator reveals a role of ethylene signaling in the regulation of lateral root angles. Cell reports 2024 Feb 13;43(2):113763. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.113763. PMID: 38358890
• Ogura, T., Goeschl, C., Filiault, D., Mirea, M., Slovak, R., Wolhrab, B., Satbhai, S.B., Busch, W. (2019). Root System Depth in Arabidopsis Is Shaped by EXOCYST70A3 via the Dynamic Modulation of Auxin Transport. Cell. 178(2):400-412.e16. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.06.021

Contact :

Wolfgang Busch :  wbusch@salk.edu 
Chercheur d'accueil : satoshi.fujita@univ-tlse3.fr