Genetic engineering of plants is at the core of sustainability efforts, natural product synthesis, and agricultural crop engineering. The plant cell wall is often a barrier that limits the ease and throughput with which exogenous biomolecules can be delivered to plants. Current delivery techniques suffer from host range limitations, low transformation efficiencies, toxicity, and unavoidable DNA integration into the host genome. In this study, we demonstrate efficient diffusion-based biomolecule delivery into tissues and organs of intact plants of several species with a suite of pristine and chemically-functionalized high aspect ratio nanomaterials: single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs, Figure 1a). Efficient DNA delivery and strong protein expression without transgene integration is accomplished in Nicotiana benthamiana (Nb), Eruca sativa (arugula), Triticum aestivum (wheat) and Gossypium hirsutum (cotton) leaves and arugula protoplasts (Figure 1b). We also demonstrate a second nanoparticle-based strategy in which small interfering RNA (siRNA) is delivered to mature Nicotiana benthamiana leaves, to effectively silence a gene with 95% efficiency (Figure 1c). Additionally, we find that SWNTs not only facilitate biomolecule transport into plant cells but also protect polynucleotides from nuclease degradation (Figure 1d). Our work provides a tool for species-independent, targeted, and passive delivery of genetic material, without transgene integration, into plant cells for diverse plant biotechnology applications.

Nanomaterials enable biomolecule delivery in mature plants for high-throughput plant transformation applications

2019 Fall National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.