RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Building customizable auto-luminescent luciferase-based reporters in plants
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 809533
DO 10.1101/809533
A1 Arjun Khakhar
A1 Colby Starker
A1 James Chamness
A1 Nayoung Lee
A1 Sydney Stokke
A1 Cecily Wang
A1 Ryan Swanson
A1 Furva Rizvi
A1 Takato Imaizumi
A1 Dan Voytas
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/17/809533.abstract
AB Bioluminescence is a powerful biological signal that scientists have repurposed to design reporters for gene expression in plants and animals. However, there are some downsides associated with the need to provide a substrate to these reporters, such as its high cost and non-uniform tissue penetration. In this work we reconstitute a fungal bioluminescence pathway (FBP) in planta using an easily composable toolbox of parts. We demonstrate that the FBP can create luminescence across various tissues in a broad range of plants without external substrate addition. We also show how our toolbox can be used to deploy the FBP in planta to build auto-luminescent reporters for the study of gene-expression and hormone fluxes. A low-cost imaging platform for gene expression profiling is also described. These experiments lay the groundwork for the future construction of programmable auto-luminescent plant traits, such as creating light driven plant-pollinator interactions or light emitting plant-based sensors.