GM Plants that Produce Higher Biomass

Since plants use a common resource pool for developmental processes and metabolic pathways, scientists have known that plants employ a specific mechanism of regulating the distribution of nutrients. Plants can choose whether to use their resources for growth and development, production of defense compounds or for storage, as in fruits and specialized roots.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Germany studied the role of the important metabolite, phosphoribosylpyrophosphate (PRPP), in plant resource partitioning. PRS, the gene coding for the enzyme necessary for PRPP synthesis was introduced to Arabidopsis and tobacco plants. PRPP is necessary for growth, as it is an important link in the biosynthesis of nucleotides (DNA and RNA), certain amino acids and important enzyme components. Introduction of foreign PRS leads to transgenic plants with increased biomass under different standardized growth conditions. Increase in growth was found to be accompanied by increase levels of sugar and other metabolites. This shows that PRPP co-limits growth rates.

The discovery has obvious implications for biotechnological strategies to increase biomass of certain crops, especially those that are being used as substrate for biofuel production.

The open access article is available at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-7652.2007.00314.x