Plant metabolic engineering in the synthetic biology era: plant chassis selection

In the July 2017 Gordon Research Conference on Plant Metabolic Engineering that was held in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, an intriguing discussion began. This discussion centered on the question—what is the best model species/tissue/engineering platform for plant metabolic engineering? In synthetic biology parlance, the question can be restated, which plant chassis is best for metabolic engineering? Synthetic biology is a transformative combination of DNA technology, engineering principles, and computational tools that makes it possible to design new life processes and to repurpose natural ones for useful purposes. Synthetic biology applications began in microorganisms and are expanding into more complicated systems, like plants, which bring certain challenges (Liu and Stewart 2015). Nonetheless, plant biology tools and experience are rapidly enabling metabolic engineering applications (Vazquez-Vilar et al. 2018).