Genetic engineering as an approach to enhance the lipid-binding properties of the Flowering locus T, the member of the Phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein family

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EU Mission for Adaptation to Climate Change perceives the improved dryland agriculture as one of the ways to adapt and survive. Humans have the technology and processes to address the major agricultural issues today, such as pest infestation, droughts, the misuse of herbicides; however, the global warming requires a new set of tools and the willingness to adapt from all of us. The key developmental switch for the flower/fruit bearing plants is the change from vegetative to reproductive growth, and the timing is crucial. The climate changes have been already impacting the flowering, as several perennial and annual crops have flowered earlier by about 2 days per decade, during the last 50 years. The flowering locus T is a plant protein highly recognized as a part of the florigen complex, a mobile protein that is produced in the leaf companion cells and transported to the plant shoot apex to induce flowering. My previous work was focused on the FT preference to bind to phosphatidylglycerol (PG), over other lipid species, in the temperature-dependent manner, and the impact on the flowering time. The MSCA Project will address the relevance of the wider array of FT-PG interactions, by utilizing the genetic modifications to produce and characterize the FT mutant proteins with enhanced lipid-binding properties. The super sticky FT would be difficult to remove from the membrane, which could have a potential industrial application. A challenge would be to create the protein that could not bind to the membrane, which will shed a new light onto flowering regulation. The multidisciplinary approach, consisting of molecular biology, biochemistry, structural chemistry, and biophysics, will produce deliverables for the subsequent in planta project. The measured impact of different ambient temperatures will provide us with the knowledge of the fine-tuning and control over the protein-lipid interactions, which could have the long-standing effects in the agricultural applications.