{"id":8313,"date":"2014-07-03T14:50:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T19:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=8313"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:39:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:39:56","slug":"dangl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=8313","title":{"rendered":"The Business of Bugs: Bringing agricultural biotechnology to the Triangle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cY<\/span>ou can\u2019t digest your\u00a0food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff Dangl isn\u2019t a doctor \u2014 he\u2019s a plant biologist. But he\u2019s right about my guts. The trillions of microbes in my intestines help me break down food and absorb nutrients. I knew that much. But I never realized that it works the same way for\u00a0plants.<\/p>\n

Instead of digestive tracts, plants have millions of bacteria on their roots and in the soil. Some of these microbes may be opportunistic hangers-on or even foes \u2014 but many actually help plants grow and\u00a0thrive.<\/p>\n

A custom-made cocktail of microbes, applied to a plant or a seed, could increase crop yield, protect the plant from drought, and fight off pests without using insecticide. But before agricultural biotechnology companies can start making microbe recipes, they\u2019ll need to know which microbes work best and which ones go together. For that, scientists like Dangl at UNC<\/span> are discovering what each bug does and whether it should be part of the\u00a0mix.<\/p>\n

A microbe that seems good at fixing nitrogen, for example, doesn\u2019t always<\/em> fix nitrogen. \u201cIt might do great in the field from whence it came, but if you take it to a different microbial community, it doesn\u2019t work,\u201d Dangl says. There are millions of microbes in the soil around a plant, he says. Thousands on each leaf. That\u2019s an astronomically high number of microbe-to-microbe relationships to figure\u00a0out.<\/p>\n

But first, Dangl\u2019s colleague Joe Kieber explains why microbes matter. \u201cThe earth is going to have two billion more mouths to feed by 2050, and we\u2019re pretty much at carrying capacity with our agricultural land,\u201d says Kieber, a UNC<\/span> molecular biologist who studies how plant cells communicate. \u201cEven if the food were perfectly distributed worldwide, we\u2019re not going to be able to feed two billion more people without increasing yield in some\u00a0way.\u201d<\/p>\n

For areas struggling with drought, we could use microbes to help plants grow with less water, Kieber says. But drought resistance isn\u2019t just for East Africa and other already-dry places. Worldwide, more people and more pollution means that less fresh water is available for irrigation each year, so many plants could use a microbe boost to help them grow in drier\u00a0soil.<\/p>\n

Hardier plants, better crop yield, protection from insects and pathogens \u2014 these are the goals of the fast-growing agricultural biotechnology industry, which has taken off in North Carolina\u2019s Research Triangle. BASF<\/span>, Syngenta, Bayer, and Monsanto each have centers here, along with many small\u00a0startups.<\/p>\n

Earlier in 2014, one Danish biotech company, Novozymes, was trying to decide where in the United States to build a new research facility. After a meeting with Triangle-area universities, Novozymes started talking with Kieber, Dangl, and a few other UNC<\/span> microbiologists about what the company hopes will be a years-long collaboration with UNC<\/span> to make microbe\u00a0cocktails.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you develop a product, you need all the pieces in place in a lab setting to tell you if it\u2019s going to work,\u201d says Thomas Sorensen, director of R&D at Novozymes. \u201cThat basic research is going on at UNC<\/span>.\u201d Novozymes announced in April that it will build its new research center in Cary, North Carolina, where it will employ 100\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

Many skills and steps go into building a plant-enhancing microbe cocktail, Dangl says. The microbes have to survive shipping. Then they have to survive being stored on a farm in a barn that might be scorching hot in summer and well below freezing in winter. Finally, the product has to scale up \u2014 you have to be able to make a lot<\/em> of the\u00a0bacteria.<\/p>\n

If there are millions of microbes on and around a plant, how do you tell which ones are helpful? Instead of investigating all the bacteria, Dangl says, he lets the plant be his\u00a0guide.<\/p>\n

Out of the thousands of types of microbes in the soil around a plant, only a small fraction \u2014 meaning hundreds \u2014 make it inside a plant\u2019s roots or onto its leaves. Some of those microbes are probably unwelcome invaders, but Dangl figures the plant lets at least some of them in on purpose. His lab has found that many plants share a core microbiome: a set of microbes that live in and around the plants. The more closely related two plant species are, the more similar their\u00a0microbiomes.<\/p>\n

Some bacteria, we know, supply plants with food. \u201cThe plant makes sugar from the sun, and that sugar, that carbon, gets pumped out of the roots in forms that attract microbes that have phosphorous. The microbes bring the phosphorous to the plant and eat the carbon,\u201d Dangl\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

Other microbes fight off bad bacteria that cause disease. The plant in turn can help the microbes by making food for them<\/em> and improving the pH of the\u00a0soil.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince a plant is born and lives and dies in the same place, it has to be able to negotiate with that environment,\u201d Dangl says. \u201cGenetically identical seedlings might germinate in five different soil types and need to balance their nutritional requirements differently in each one. Maybe the soil is phosphate-poor. Or maybe it\u2019s nitrogen-poor. Maybe the soil\u2019s acidic, and the plant has to sense that and buffer\u00a0itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Dangl\u2019s goals is to put together a team of 20 bacteria that can help crops in several ways at once. \u201cPick four traits you want,\u201d he says. \u201cFor that, I need five strains per trait that each do the same thing. If strains 1, 2, and 3 can\u2019t work, strains 4 and 5 step in. We have to understand the rules of how the 20 strains interact with each other and with the plant, such that when we dump them in soil that\u2019s not where they came from, there\u2019s a high likelihood they\u2019ll still\u00a0work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dangl and his team test these communities of microbes by applying them to genetically identical plants and then exposing the plants to rough conditions, such as low phosphate in the soil. After six weeks, they evaluate the plants \u2014 which ones look healthy and large, and which look unhealthy and puny? \u201cWe look at the top 5 percent of performance \u2014 do they share some community members?\u201d Dangl says. By \u201ccommunity members,\u201d he means bacteria. The ones that show up in the plants that grew well are candidates for further\u00a0study.<\/p>\n

When these cream-of-the-crop bacteria have been thoroughly tested, they may make a stop across the hall, in the lab of Elizabeth Shank. Here, Shank\u2019s lab uses advanced imaging techniques to minutely measure everything going on in a sample of\u00a0bacteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you put two bacteria together, it may look like they\u2019re ignoring each other, but really they\u2019re responding to each other chemically in dramatic ways,\u201d Shank says. \u201cWe\u2019ve also done plant-root imaging where we can see what kind of metabolites the roots are producing. Does it change when we put them with\u00a0bacteria?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sorensen from Novozymes thinks they could use the\u00a0Shank lab\u2019s imaging to show that a microbe cocktail works. \u201cWhen you want to have high yield of soybeans, for example, you need microbes to make the plant better at fixing nitrogen,\u201d Sorensen says. \u201cBeth is working on technology where you can document what happens in the real application. We\u2019re in need of ways to show our customers how a microbe product does what we say it\u2019s going to\u00a0do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treating a plant with microbes sounds fine to Dangl, but at the same time that he\u2019s looking for good bugs, he\u2019s also looking for good DNA<\/span>. In 2012, he helped found an agricultural biotech company, AgBiome, to find helpful microbes to use on plants and also to put bacterial DNA<\/span> directly in plant genomes.<\/p>\n

Many plants have only a single gene that protects them against a harmful microbe, Dangl says, and the microbe can eventually mutate around the gene. Build in a second gene to resist the same pathogen, and you double the amount of time it takes a microbe to evolve its way around the plant\u2019s\u00a0defenses.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, just finding these helpful genes was very difficult, Shank says. How do you take a handful of dirt and find the one tiny microbe with the one gene that might do what you want? Today, scientists use gene-sequencing equipment in facilities like UNC<\/span>\u2019s Genome Sciences Building to read all the DNA<\/span> in a sample quickly and\u00a0completely.<\/p>\n

Genetically modified plants can be controversial, but it\u2019s hard to ignore the environmental benefits, Kieber says. \u201cThe right cocktail of bacteria could improve the efficiency with which plants take up fertilizer \u2014 so maybe you could use less fertilizer, which would save the farmer money and would also mean less runoff into lakes and rivers,\u201d he\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

And genetic modifications for pest or disease resistance mean fewer chemicals sprayed on fields. Genetically modified cotton, for example, makes a protein called Bt that\u2019s harmless to animals but kills insect larvae. \u201cThousands of tons of pesticides are no longer sprayed in this country because of genetically modified cotton,\u201d Kieber\u00a0says.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no such thing as a genetically perfect plant. \u201cThere are plenty of things that Bt doesn\u2019t kill,\u201d Dangl says. \u201cWhen you eliminate one pest, that\u2019s less competition for other\u00a0insects.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same way with fungi and other pathogens that attack plants \u2014 genetically engineer resistance to one, and others will eventually take its place. To help feed the world, UNC<\/span> plant scientists will have to stay a few steps\u00a0ahead.<\/p>\n

Jeff Dangl is a distinguished professor, Joseph Kieber is a professor, and Elizabeth Shank is an assistant professor, all in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC<\/span>. Distinguished Professor Alan Jones, Research Associate Professor Sarah Grant, Associate Professor Gregory Copenhaver, Associate Professor Jason Reed, and Professor Ann Matthysse, all from the biology department, are also involved in plant microbiology and growth regulation\u00a0research.<\/em><\/p>\n

The genome-sequencing facility in UNC<\/span>\u2019s Genome Sciences Building was paid for with money from the University Cancer Research Fund, an investment by the N.C.<\/span> General Assembly to fund innovative research to detect, treat, and prevent\u00a0cancer.<\/em><\/p>\n

Story by Susan Hudson, Endeavors<\/a> magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

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Learn more:<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

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The Dangl Lab<\/a><\/div>\n
The Kieber Lab<\/a><\/div>\n
More about plant microbes in the Atlantic<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A custom-made cocktail of microbes could increase crop yield, protect a plant from drought and fight off pests without using insecticide. But before agricultural biotechnology companies can start making microbe recipes, they need to know which microbes work best. That’s where UNC’s Jeff Dangl steps in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2357,24,1214,2358,1305,36,37,38,39,40],"class_list":["post-8313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-natural-sciences-mathematics","tag-agricultural-biotechnology","tag-carolina","tag-jeff-dangl","tag-microbes","tag-plant-biology","tag-unc","tag-unc-arts-and-sciences","tag-unc-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-unc-chapel-hill","tag-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46755,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8313\/revisions\/46755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}