Transgenic Plants Enhancing Nitrogen Uptake Efficiency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current agricultural practices face challenges in improving nitrogen use efficiency in crops, leading to inefficient fertilizer use and environmental impact, despite decades of research not producing significant improvements.
Innovation Solution
The development of transgenic plants with modified traits that enhance nitrogen uptake and assimilation through specific polynucleotide and polypeptide sequences, using tissue-enhanced promoters to regulate expression in roots and other tissues, and introducing nucleic acid constructs to improve nitrogen uptake and assimilation efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If nitrogen fertilizer application rates are increased to improve crop yield, then grain yield increases, but nitrogen use efficiency decreases and environmental pollution increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the genetic parameters of the plant by introducing transgenes that encode nitrogen transporters and regulatory proteins. This modifies the plant's nitrogen uptake physiology, enabling it to acquire nitrogen more efficiently from the soil at lower fertilizer application rates, thus improving nitrogen use efficiency while maintaining grain yield
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses transgenic modification as an intermediary approach between traditional fertilizer application and plant nitrogen acquisition. By introducing foreign genes that enhance nitrogen transporter activity and regulation, the plant acts as an intermediary system that improves nitrogen uptake efficiency without requiring increased fertilizer inputs, thereby resolving the contradiction between yield and nitrogen use efficiency
2Productivity
If nitrogen fertilizer application rates are increased to improve crop yield, then grain yield increases, but environmental pollution increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the plant's genetic parameters to enhance nitrogen uptake capacity through transgenic expression of nitrogen transporter genes. This enables the plant to maintain high grain yield with reduced nitrogen fertilizer application, thereby preventing the environmental pollution that results from excess nitrogen not being taken up by the crop
Solution Approach 2:
The patent converts the potential harm of nitrogen fertilizer application into benefit by creating plants that are genetically equipped to utilize nitrogen more efficiently. The transgenic plants can convert applied nitrogen into biomass and grain yield more effectively, preventing nitrogen loss to the environment while maintaining productivity
3Loss of information
If decades of research focus on improving nitrogen use efficiency, then understanding of nitrogen metabolism increases, but significant improvements in nitrogen uptake efficiency are not achieved
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses transgenic technology as an intermediary approach to bridge the gap between scientific understanding and practical improvement. By introducing foreign genes that encode nitrogen transporters and regulatory proteins, the patent translates basic scientific knowledge into functional improvements in nitrogen uptake efficiency that were not achievable through traditional breeding or management practices
Solution Approach 2:
The patent achieves significant improvements in nitrogen uptake efficiency by changing the genetic parameters of the plant through transgenic modification. This approach bypasses the limitations of conventional research by directly modifying gene expression levels of nitrogen transporters, thereby achieving practical improvements that decades of non-transgenic research had not accomplished
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure provides transgenic plants, including crop plants and methods for their production. The transgenic plants comprise recombinant DNA constructs for the expression of polypeptides encoded by the DNA constructs. The polypeptides are capable of conferring improved traits to the transgenic plants when expressed under the control of a tissue-enhanced promoter. This disclosure also pertains to transgenic plants and their progeny plants, wherein the transgenic or progeny plants comprise the recombinant DNA constructs and are selected for having enhanced nitrogen use efficiency and/or nitrogen uptake. Seed of the transgenic plants that can be grown into a plant that comprise the disclosed recombinant DNA constructs and exhibits having enhanced nitrogen use efficiency, and which may be selected for this trait, are also envisioned.