Transgenic Plants Enhancing Cold Tolerance via Molecular Markers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Plants face significant challenges in cold stress conditions, leading to reduced growth, biomass production, and increased susceptibility to damage, particularly in agricultural crops like corn and cotton, due to chilling temperatures, which limit geographical range and growing seasons, and current methods for improving cold tolerance are time-consuming and species-specific.
Innovation Solution
The introduction of exogenous nucleic acids into plant cells, encoding polypeptides with specific regulatory regions, such as those with high Hidden Markov Model bit scores or sequence identities, to enhance cold tolerance, allowing for the production of transgenic plants with improved growth and acclimation under cold conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional breeding methods are used to improve cold tolerance in plants, then cold tolerance may be improved, but the process is time-consuming and species-specific
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses molecular markers as intermediaries to identify and select plants with desirable cold tolerance traits. These markers serve as proxies for the actual tolerance genes, allowing breeders to screen and select plants based on marker presence rather than waiting for lengthy growth and stress testing periods, thus dramatically reducing breeding time while maintaining improvement in cold tolerance
2Reliability
If conventional breeding methods are used to improve cold tolerance in plants, then cold tolerance may be improved, but the methods are species-specific and lack versatility
Solution Approach 1:
The patent develops molecular marker systems that can be applied across multiple plant species to identify cold tolerance traits. The marker-based selection approach is not limited to a single species but can be adapted to various crops, making the breeding methodology universal and applicable to diverse plant types, thereby improving both cold tolerance and method versatility simultaneously
3Reliability
If plants are exposed to cold stress conditions, then natural selection may occur, but growth rate and biomass production are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs molecular markers to identify plants that already possess genetic predisposition for cold tolerance before exposing them to stressful cold conditions. By selecting plants with favorable markers in advance, the need for prolonged cold stress exposure is reduced, allowing plants to maintain better growth rates while still achieving necessary cold acclimation through targeted selection rather than random natural selection
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and materials for modulating cold tolerance levels in plants are disclosed. For example, nucleic acids encoding cold tolerance-modulating polypeptides are disclosed as well as methods for using such nucleic acids to transform plant cells. Also disclosed are plants having increased cold tolerance levels and plant products produced from plants having increased cold tolerance levels.