Implementing the New Biology Decadal Challenges Linking Food, Energy, and the Environment: Summary of a Workshop, June 3-4, 2010 (2010) / Chapter Skim
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2 Developing the Vision: Highlights of the Workshop
2 Developing the Vision: Highlights of the Workshop
Pages 9-24
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From page 9... ...
In welcoming participants, HHMI President Robert Tjian invited them to consider the HHMI campus as a place to come together to think about applying the New Biology to national, and even global, problems. The steering committee, led by Keith Yamamoto, chair of the NRC Board on Life Sciences, developed an agenda to do just that.
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From page 10... ...
Several speakers took note of how some plants can survive in inhospitable environments, such as semiarid environments, salt water, or places as mundane as a crack in a sidewalk. Understanding how plants grow under highly unfavorable temperature, water, and nutrient conditions could enable development of crop plants that thrive in areas where malnourishment and starvation are acute and contribute to the ability to develop biofuel feedstocks that compete minimally with food crops or impact natural ecosystems.
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From page 11... ...
She and other presenters said that deeper understanding of microbes, their functions, and their interactions is essential to meet the goals set out in the New Biology report. Charles Rice went further and suggested that understanding and manipulating plant-asso ciated microorganisms could make plants "self-fertilizing" and thereby reduce the need for nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, which are a major component of fossil fuel inputs in crop production (Box 2-1)
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From page 12... ...
This includes, for example, recognizing the role of microbial and insect communities in sustaining plant and animal health and determining how to plant mixed crops to minimize fertilizer and water requirements and maximize pest and disease resistance. Sean Eddy, reporting on behalf of Group 3, said the funding gap in basic plant research means that strengthening a broad knowledge base is a pre
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From page 13... ...
The group discussed a "Plan A" and a "Plan B": Plan A to achieve a carbon-neutral environment; if not, Plan B to learn how to adapt to a non-carbon-neutral environment and to accelerate the time scale of that adaptation. TRANSFORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS Discussion ensued about whether the public would embrace the goal of carbon neutrality as being as clear as "landing a man on the moon." Various participants affirmed that the advances implicit in this goal would, indeed, require transformative discoveries to produce new knowledge.
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From page 14... ...
and genotypic analysis; • Experimental work, including advanced crop breeding, synthetic biology, and molecular techniques; • A database that integrates the observational and experimental work and helps develop iterative hypotheses that can be tested in experiments and confirmed by observations of systems -- a database to handle and organize such voluminous data implies that advances in data gathering and bioinformatics infrastructure are necessary; and • The development of social policy goals: engagement of stakeholders, especially farmers doing the agricultural work, as well as legal, ethical, and educational implications. Breakout Group 2 discussed similar themes related to outcomes and research.
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From page 15... ...
bio-based economy: getting carbon from the air, not from the ground, and moving away from fossil fuels toward using biomass for energy and materials. ENGAGING SCIENTISTS: FIVE BROAD DELIVERABLES Ultimately, workshop participants identified five broad deliverables that together could move food and bioenergy production toward carbon neutrality, as well as examples of activities and potential organiza tional structures to accomplish them.
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From page 16... ...
scale • Advanced phenotyping at the component and systems levels Some potential research goals • Increase photosynthetic efficiency by 50% • Make more crop plants perennials Some potential research goals • Cure major plant disease • Understand more fully the genomes and niches of microbes • Double nitrogen use efficiency • Understand the interaction of microbes with plants and animals • Breed more crops that fix their own nitrogen and their role in plant and animal "health" (see other boxes) • Double water use efficiency • Understand response of microbial communities to different • Recruit microbes to provide nutrients kinds of stress • Adapt plants to thrive despite variable and • Understand how genetic diversity affects function and affects function and extreme water, nutrient and temperature conditions adaptability of microbial communities • Breed plants that absorb light and convert • Understand how microbes communicate with solar energy over a longer growing season each other and with other organisms • Reduce loss to insects by 50% • Maximize productivity in each individual plant each year FIGURE 2-1 Components identified by workshop participants to achieve carbon-neutral food and biofuel.
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From page 17... ...
Optimizing Plant Productivity Dr. Ort suggested that New Biology integration of expertise is required to • Increase photosynthetic efficiency by 50 percent; • Reduce damage from plant disease, which could increase yield by 30 percent and also save water; • Double nitrogen use efficiency and increase the number of nitrogen-fixing crops; • Double water use efficiency; • Improve nutrient acquisition through novel microbial associations; • Optimize CO2 response in plants and increase plant tolerance to changing precipitation patterns, extremes in growing conditions, and tropospheric ozone; • Decrease the time required for plants to mature so they can be productive in shorter growing seasons; • Develop new perennial crop and biofuel plants, introduce perenniality into annual plants, and develop multiple cropping capabilities; • Reduce loss to insects by 50 percent; and • Maximize productivity in each individual plant, each year.
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From page 18... ...
Workshop participants suggested research activities in the following areas: • Developing livestock and husbandry procedures that do not employ antibiotic therapy • Developing feedstocks that are digested more efficiently • Improving energy partitioning between feed and the host -- potential approaches include manipulation of microbiota by pre- or probiotics, genetic engineering of metabolic traits in microbial communities, genetic manipulation of animals and exploitation of wild alleles for energy utili zation, and plant manipulations to optimize feedstocks • Increasing energy conversion in food source animals -- domesticate high-energy conversion efficiency animals for food sources • Minimizing animal efflux or using it for energy • Improving containment of microbes, such as enteropathogens, to keep them out of the food and water supply -- develop sensitive biosenti nels to ensure that standards are met Microbes will play an essential role in improved animal husbandry and waste management. For example, ruminant microbiota within the cow gut break down cellulosic material, which could be more thoroughly explored for wider application.
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From page 19... ...
Work shop participants suggested the following research on crops to advance their emergence as new biofuel feedstock: • Identification of potential pests and diseases, eliminating plant strains that are highly vulnerable to catastrophic diseases, or developing management options or disease resistance; • Stimulation of regionally appropriate public sector breeding or propagation systems that reduce risk for the private sector at the initial stages;
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From page 20... ...
. In addition to many components included in previous deliverables, participants suggested research activities in the following areas: • Functional diversity, to manage pests and diseases, improve water and nutrient use, and overall to better manage risk over time; • Optimized biocomplexity -- companion planting to increase productivity, disease and pest resistance, and the ability to plant mixed fields with the optimal plant in each microenvironment; • Chemical ecology, to learn how plant biochemistry can be used to help crops compete more effectively with weeds and optimize beneficial interactions with insects; and • Advanced phenotyping at the component and systems levels, remotely and in situ.
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From page 21... ...
Workshop participants reiterated the importance of supporting the kinds of changes in education practices that were outlined in the New Biology report. Existing programs, such as those sponsored by HHMI and NSF's IGERT program1 could be used as models for incorporating educational goals into the program to achieve carbon neutrality.
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From page 22... ...
Instead, employ simpler systems, at least initially, not necessarily integrated out of the box but "integrate-able." Eddy suggested that computer simulations, carefully done, can contribute critical advances across the range of investigations considered in this summary; this kind of problem-based learning could entice computer and other technical people to be drawn to biological issues. ENGAGING THE PUBLIC AND POLICY MAKERS: DIAGNOSES AND CURES Achieving carbon neutrality calls for involvement by many stakeholders, not only in science and education, but also those who make funding decisions, develop policy, and give or withdraw public support through advocacy and voting.
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From page 23... ...
Conversely, advances in food and bioenergy production that are socially accept able, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable can be within reach through integration across fields of science and technology.
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