Peter Kindgren (left) and Totte Niittylä received funding from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (photo left: Fredrik Larsson; photo right: Johan Gunséus).
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has recently approved two new research projects involving UPSC researchers. Peter Kindgren received a project grant aimed at improving crop resilience and productivity in a dynamic manner. Totte Niittylä, along with two other researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Helsinki, have been awarded an interdisciplinary synergy grant. Their goal is to investigate in detail how trees direct photosynthetically assimilated carbon to wood, with the ultimate aim of enhancing the carbon capture capacity of trees.
Improving resilience and productivity in crops in a dynamic manner
Peter Kindgren received a project grant and will work on a biotechnological project to improve crops. His project focuses on a fine-tuning mechanism in plants that influences their biomass and stress resilience. Central to his project is a gene that controls several processes in plants such as activating stress response mechanisms while inhibiting biomass production.
This gene’s activity is suppressed by a long non-coding RNA which is an RNA molecule that does not contain information for a protein. This RNA is produced from a DNA segment next to the gene and prevents the production of full-length RNA from the gene. Peter Kindgren and his team plan to study the interaction between these two players to find ways to adjust them to enhance plant fitness.
“Our goal is to boost biomass production when the plants are not stressed and increase their stress resilience when adverse weather is expected,” explains Peter Kindgren. “The advantage of this system will be that it can trigger a rapid, predictable and short-term response in field-grown plants during the growing season.”
The researchers intend to test their system in the model plant thale cress before applying it to cereals like wheat and barley. Their ultimate aim is to provide farmers with an additional tool to mitigate the effects of extreme weather and enhance biomass production before harvest.
Enhancing carbon capture capacity of trees
The other project funded recently by the Novo Nordisk Foundation in which Totte Niittylä is involved is tackling a different but equally important issue: the ability of trees to assimilate and store atmospheric carbon. This project brings together the expertise of Thomas Moritz (University of Copenhagen), Totte Niittylä (UPSC and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) and Ari-Pekka Mähönen (University of Helsinki). Together, they aim to identify factors that limit wood formation in trees.
Their goal is to create a detailed map showing how carbon is transported, processed and metabolised within wood. The researchers will work with isolated cells from different wood tissues and analyse gene activities and metabolites within these cells. They also plan to model carbon transfer between these cells using labelled carbon atoms.
“We aim to identify the enzymes and metabolic processes that restrict wood formation in trees”, says Totte Niittylä. “Trees play a crucial role in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but we still do not fully understand the metabolic pathways involved in this process. This knowledge gap makes it difficult to predict how much carbon dioxide trees can capture, and it also hampers the breeding efforts to improve the production of wood in fast-growing feedstocks.”
The researchers believe their findings could lead to enhancing trees’ carbon capture capabilities through breeding and biotechnological applications. They anticipate that their results will be interesting for plant biologists and breeders working with fast-growing trees and also more widely research and development teams in private companies and public organisations working on metabolism and its regulation.
More information about the projects:
Project grant
Title: A dynamic circuit to increase biomass and stress resilience in crops
Contact: Peter Kindgren, Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email:
Novo Nordisk Interdisciplinary Synergy grant
Title: CarbonTree: CO2 assimilation capacity of trees – releasing the sink limitation
Project partners: Thomas Moritz (University of Copenhagen), Totte Niittylä (UPSC, SLU), and Ari-Pekka Mähönen (University of Helsinki)
Contact: Totte Niittylä, Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email: