Licensing opportunity
Scientists from the Norwich Research Park (NRP) have discovered an antibiotic-generating enzyme in oats that could be used to protect cereal crops from fungal diseases such as ‘take-all’, a disease that is estimated to affect half the UK’s wheat crops at a cost of up to £60 million per year.
Aspects of the technology are available for licence though the technology commercialisation company PBL Ltd.
NRP scientists in collaboration with the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Aberystwyth in Wales and the Institute of Plant Molecular Biology at Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, found that an enzyme from oats, called Sad2 that makes the plant resistant to infections.
Take-all is a particularly damaging fungal disease because it infects the roots of the plant and can be passed onto subsequent crops grown in the same field. The researchers found that Sad2 functions in the roots, producing the antimicrobial at the site most vulnerable to fungal attack.
It turns out that Sad2 is highly conserved, having evolved from an ancient family of enzymes that have remained unchanged over millions of years and are almost identical across the plant, fungi and animal kingdoms.
The other known enzymes in the family are all involved in the production of fats called sterols, for example, cholesterol in humans. The discovery of a new member of the family with a completely different function was therefore surprising.
Project leader Anne Osbourn said, “Our data show that the Sad2 gene has evolved from the most ancient and highly conserved cytochrome P450 family by gene duplication and has then diverged from its original role in making sterols to adopt a new function producing an antimicrobial chemical called avenacin.”
The synthesis of avenacin is a multistep process. The team in Norwich has identified five genes coding for different enzymes in this pathway and is currently isolating the others. Unexpectedly, these genes were clustered together in oat DNA – while clusters of genes that have connected functions are often found in bacteria or fungi they are extremely rare in plants.
Osbourn said, “If we could transfer this gene cluster from oats into other plants, it might be possible to breed cereals that are resistant to devastating crop diseases such as take-all."
The Sad2 gene technology is the subject of a pending worldwide patent application assigned to the NRP’s technology transfer company PBL Ltd. PBL is working with DuPont on commercialising some aspects of the technology and is looking for commercial partners to work on other applications.
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