Nitrogen crucially determines the growth and productivity of photosynthetic organisms. However, it is often supplied by means of artificial fertilizers, whose production is energetically intensive and significantly relies on non-renewable fossil fuels. Therefore, investigating nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), particularly in biofuel crops, is a problem with wide-ranging consequences for a sustainable economy. Toward this, we employed metabolic engineering tools including isotope-assisted metabolic flux and network analysis to investigate NUE and carbon-nitrogen interactions in cells of the tree poplar (Populus trichocarpa). Poplar, a biofuel crop, uses an array of sophisticated metabolic and regulatory mechanisms to deposit, remobilize and thereby conserve nitrogen. The results of our MFA experiments, in which poplar cell suspensions were subjected to different carbon-nitrogen ratios, are anticipated to reveal the extensive metabolic rewiring that occurs in poplar cells when they deposit and remobilize nitrogen, and eventually provide insights toward engineering photosynthetic organisms with high NUE.

Elucidation of carbon-nitrogen interactions in poplar by isotope-assisted metabolic flux analysis

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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