New Plant Transporter Discoveries Could Ease Global Food and Fuel Demands
Yi-Fang Tsay from Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica and 11 leading plant
biologists from around the world whose laboratories recently discovered important
properties of the biochemistry, genetics and physiology of plant transport proteins that,
collectively, could have a profound impact on global agriculture. They report in the May
2 issue of the journal Nature that the application of their findings could help the world
meet its increasing demand for food and fuel as the global population grows from seven
billion people to an estimated nine billion by 2050. As pointed out by Yi-Fan Tsay in the
article: “Nitrogen fertilizer production consumes one percent of global energy usage and
poses the highest input cost for many crops; nevertheless, only 30 to 50 percent of the
nitrogen fertilizer applied are utilized by plants. The remainder can lead to production of
the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, or to eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems through
water run-off.” Studies in Yi-Fang Tsay’s team showed that nitrate transporter also
function as a nitrate sensor. Dual function of nitrate transporter CHL 1 in nitrate uptake
and nitrate sensing suggest that one could optimize nitrate uptake and signaling at the
same times to improve nitrogen utilization efficiency and therefore reduce the demand of
nitrogen fertilizer. Studies of Dr. Julian Schroeder of UCSD and Dr. RanaMunns of the
University of Western Australia showed that manipulating Na transporter HKT1 can
enhance salt tolerance of wheat and increase yield by 25%. Emanuel Delhaize in
Australia and Leon Kochian at Cornell University, opens up the potential to grow crops
on the 30 percent of the earth’s acidic soils that are now unusable for agricultural
production. A recent discovery of Wolf Frommer of Stanford University showed that
sugar transporter SWEET has been used to develop rice plants that confer pest resistance.
In summary, new
discoveries of
transporter proteins
have profound
implication for
increasing the supply
of food and energy
for our rapidly
growing global
population.
參考論文：
J. I. Schroeder *, E. Delhaize, W. B. Frommer, M. Lou Guerinot, M. J. Harrison, L.
Herrera-Estrella, T.Horie, L. V. Kochian, R.Munns, N. K. Nishizawa, Y.-F. Tsay, D.
Sanders*(2013) Membrane Transporters as Keys to Improving Crops for Sustainable
Food Production. Nature497 (7447):60-66.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7447/full/nature11909.html