Conference: The GRC 2015 on Chloroplast Biotechnology: Reengineering Photosynthetic Organelles

Nontechnical description of the project:

Plastids are specialized plant cellular organelles that are responsible for the process of photosynthesis that converts sun light into chemical energy. This is one of the most essential processes for sustaining life on earth. The 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Chloroplast Biotechnology will present cutting-edge fundamental and potentially applied research by an international group of scientists interested in experimental approaches to probe Chloroplast structure and function. In addition, the workshop will address how engineering and biotechnology approaches can improve the output capacity of photosynthesis. The Broader Impacts of this conference will expose students and postdocs to cutting edge interdisciplinary research, and will expand their horizon on what is novel and important in this field. It will influence how early career scientists will structure their continued education and professional development to be marketable in the 'New Biology' arena. The enabling technologies and scientific advances presented at this conference are likely to lead to significant advances for addressing important societal needs.

Technical:

Generally recognized benefits of plastid engineering are: the potential for high-level protein expression from plastid transgenes; the expression of multiple genes in operons; and transgene containment in crops in which only the maternal parent inherits plastids, thereby preventing transgene flow via pollen. Applications of plastid transformation will be discussed in four general areas: (1) expression of recombinant proteins for industrial and pharmaceutical applications; (2) engineering the plastid genome to improve photosynthetic efficiency and plant productivity; (3) engineering novel metabolic pathways into chloroplasts; (4) engineering novel agronomic traits into chloroplasts for gene stacking and transgene containment.