Conference: 2025 Chloroplast Biotechnology GRC and GRS: Engineering Plastids for Better Crops and New Functions

This NSF award will be used to financial support US-based graduate students, postdocs, and other early career scientists, including under-represented minorities, to attend the Gordon Research Conference on Chloroplast Biotechnology and its preceding GRS (Gordon Research Seminar) held from March 29 – April 4, 2025, in Lucca, Italy. Chloroplasts are essential organelles in algae and plants, and they carry out photosynthesis to produce sugars and starch from captured sunlight and CO2.

Chloroplasts also produce a diverse array of molecules that are essential in our food and for our health, including several (pro)vitamins, amino acids, anti-oxidants, fatty acids and lipids. This conference will serve to discuss ongoing research to improve chloroplasts in plants and algae to enhance their production of products that are beneficial for our society.

These include vaccines, novel pharmaceutical products, nutritional supplements, as well as biofuels. Junior and senior researchers will discuss and interact to generate new ideas and start novel collaborations to accelerate scientific discoveries.

The Gordon Research Conference on Chloroplast Biotechnology held from March 29 – April 4, 2025, in Lucca, Italy, will present novel research in engineering plastids to either improve existing functions (e.g. photosynthesis) or provide them with new one. Recent progress in this research, particularly through the transfer of molecular solutions from algae and cyanobacteria, has been impressive.

In parallel, the engineering of novel functions into chloroplasts to make use of their metabolic and protein synthesis capabilities is also at an exciting juncture. The genetic transformation of plastids is now routine in many plants and algae, so the focus is moving to synthetic biology solutions based on expression of multiple genes under sophisticated control circuits.

Indeed, the relatively small and well-understood plastid genome is now a prime target for ambitious projects in several countries aimed at design and synthesis of novel genomes with enhanced traits. The basic science underpinning these advances (e.g. genome structure and replication, control of gene expression, proteostasis, plastid metabolism, metabolite transport) will be covered where relevant to these biotechnological applications.

The technologies discussed will cover the entire range from subtle tweaks in plastid metabolism, plastid genome editing, to complete redesign of the plastid genome, and will include all aspects of modifying organellar genomes, proteomes or metabolomes needed for applications in agriculture, industrial biotechnology or the pharmaceutical sector. Target products to be covered include, for example, biopharmaceuticals (vaccines and therapeutic proteins), industrial enzymes, green chemicals and next-generation biofuels.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.