Integration of biological and information technologies to enhance plant autoluminescence
Jieyu Ge, Xuye Lang, Jiayi Ji, Chengyi Qu, He Qiao, Jingling Zhong, Daren Luo, Jin Hu, Hongyu Chen, Shun Wang, Tiange Wang, Suchen Li, Wei Li, Peng Zheng, Jiming Xu, Hao Du
Abstract
Autoluminescent plants have been genetically modified to express the fungal bioluminescence pathway (FBP). However, a bottleneck in precursor production has limited the brightness of these luminescent plants. Here, we demonstrate the effectiveness of utilizing a computational model to guide a multiplex five-gene-silencing strategy by an artificial microRNA array to enhance caffeic acid (CA) and hispidin levels in plants. By combining loss-of-function-directed metabolic flux with a tyrosine-derived CA pathway, we achieved substantially enhanced bioluminescence levels. We successfully generated eFBP2 plants that emit considerably brighter bioluminescence for naked-eye reading by integrating all validated DNA modules. Our analysis revealed that the luminous energy conversion efficiency of the eFBP2 plants is currently very low, suggesting that luminescence intensity can be improved in future iterations. These findings highlight the potential to enhance plant luminescence through the integration of biological and information technologies.