Chris Dundas

Genetically Reprogramming Crops and Rhizobacteria for Nutritional Iron Biofortification Iron is a critical micronutrient for both plants and humans, yet its declining availability across agricultural systems threatens global food security and health. Biofortification of food crops has emerged as a promising strategy to combat iron deficiency and anemia, leveraging both crop breeding and microbiome-based approaches to enhance iron mobilization and uptake. Advances in plant and bacterial synthetic biology could enable the precise programming of iron homeostasis and acquisition mechanisms, offering tailored solutions across diverse species and environments. Here, we outline key biomolecules, genes, and biosynthetic and transport pathways that represent underexplored synthetic biology targets for improving crop iron acquisition. We highlight opportunities to tune expression strength, tissue specificity, and cross-host pathway transfer to enhance chelation- and reduction-mediated solubilization of soil iron and augment plant uptake. Finally, we emphasize the broader importance of developing plant–microbe–metal actuators as modular components in genetic circuit design and discuss how their deployment across diverse plant and microbial chassis could accelerate agricultural biofortification and improve global nutrition.

Excited to share our lab’s first publication at UGA!
PhD student Taden Welsh's new perspective highlights how plant + bacterial synthetic biology could enhance iron mobilization for food crop fortification.🌱🦠🧬

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Plant synthetic biology faculty opening – come be my colleague! 🌱🧬

@universityofga.bsky.social Department of Plant Biology is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Plant Synthetic Biology for Strategic Resources Research. Join UGA's growing plant synbio community!

Discovery of FoTO1 and Taxol genes enables biosynthesis of baccatin III - Nature An approach that combines single-nucleus RNA sequencing and multiplexed perturbation identifies genes that enable the biosynthesis of direct precursors of the anti-cancer drug Taxol, whose curren...

Today in Nature we report a systematic strategy to activate & identify gene sets in plants. We identify 8 new genes from the yew tree's Taxol biosynthetic pathway, enabling us to engineer tobacco with 17- & 20-gene pathways to Taxol precursors baccatin III & deBz-deoxy-Taxol #SingleCell #secmet 🧬🧪🌾

Recombinases your thing? In the latest from my lab, Veronica Greco shows how @nanopore sequencing + automated liquid handling provides the perfect platform for characterising these systems at scale! Awesome collaboration with @jennbrophy.bsky.social @sarah-guiziou.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Open faculty position in computational plant synthetic biology at @universityofga.bsky.social Dept. of Crop & Soil Sciences. Join us in Athens and be a part of UGA's emerging Institute of Synthetic Biology!
👉 Apply: www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/429...
#SynBio #PlantScience #FacultyJobs

Today’s the final day to submit your abstracts for the SIMB Annual Meeting in San Francisco! Don’t miss your chance to showcase your microbiome research.

Present your microbiome research at the SIMB Annual Meeting in San Francisco! Abstracts due May 13: sim.confex.com/sim/2025/cfp...

Angela Chen (MSU ChEMS) and I are convening the Genetically Modified Microbes in Complex Environmental & Human Microbiomes session—submit your work!

Engineered orthogonal and obligate bacterial commensalism mediated by a non-standard amino acid Nature Microbiology - A genetically engineered microbial symbiosis based on synthetic auxotrophy is created, with potential implications as a biocontainment strategy.

It seems there are no free-living organisms known to rely exclusively on one other organism for their survival

Until perhaps now

Check out our latest publication in @natmicrobiol.nature.com to see how we designed an exclusive microbial reliance using GCE

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Apoplastic barriers are essential for nodule formation and nitrogen fixation in Lotus japonicus Establishment of the apoplastic root barrier known as the Casparian strip occurs early in root development. In legumes, this area overlaps with nitrogen-fixing nodule formation, which raises the possi...

Finally!
Im so excited to present to culmination of many years of work from the fantastic Defeng Shen and some great collaborators. For details, I have made a digested thread below, but if you are more interested feel free to reach out (and read the paper of course).
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thanks for the opportunity to speak @taeseokmoon.bsky.social ! Was fun to speak about my lab’s work, much of it from my postdoc in @josedinneny.bsky.social ‘s lab!

The switch‐liker's guide to plant synthetic gene circuits Synthetic gene circuits have the potential to revolutionise how plants can be engineered by allowing highly customised gene expression patterns to be designed. Gene circuits can sense and integrate m....

Our new review in @theplantjournal.bsky.social on synthetic gene circuits is out! I am super proud of this. I hope that it acts as a useful resource for people new to gene circuits.

The switch-liker's guide to plant synthetic gene circuits

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#SynBYSS Thur 10am USA CT
155th, Mar 6: Dr Tammy Collins @bwfund.bsky.social & Elena Musteata @riceuniversity.bsky.social

156th, Mar 13: Dr Axel Visel @axelvisel.bsky.social @jgi.doe.gov & Prof Christopher Dundas at U. Georgia

Zoom link for the general audience
us02web.zoom.us/j/88380504839

🙏 NSF for supporting @uf-ifas.bsky.social / UF Horticultural Sciences' trailblazing workshop 'How SynBio can *realistically* impact crop improvement & agriculture'! We brought🌱 SynBio ECRs together w/ top ag biotech & crop breeding experts to identify disconnects btwn their worlds & how to fix them⬇️

Pretty excited to try this!

Excited to share our overview on SynCom construction published in @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social

@xinmingxu.bsky.social & @neftalyl.bsky.social together with Caja Dinesen & Adele Pioppi summerize 86 publications on SynComs for plant promotion

free download: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kdNr_,2Ci...

Moisture-responsive root-branching pathways identified in diverse maize breeding germplasm Plants grow complex root systems to extract unevenly distributed resources from soils. Spatial differences in soil moisture are perceived by root tips, leading to the patterning of new root branches t...

Proud to share our latest published work on moisture responsive root development-a process we call hydropatterning! We find that this process has been under differential selection during maize breeding and the gaseous hormone ethylene prevents branching in air.
www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

Seed tuber microbiome can predict growth potential of potato varieties - Nature Microbiology Time-resolved drone imaging of potato crop development and seed tuber microbiome data can be used to predict potato vigour, or growth potential, in next-season crops in trial fields.

Seed tuber microbiome can predict growth potential of potato varieties www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rooting for survival: how plants tackle a challenging environment through a diversity of root forms and functions Abstract. The current climate crisis has global impacts and will affect the physiology of plants across every continent. Ensuring resilience of our agricul

Proud to share our new @plantphys.bsky.social review exploring the anatomical and molecular basis for root adaptations to the environment. Prashanth Ramachandran and Andrea Ramirez detail cell types and pathways that help plants stay resilient in a changing world. academic.oup.com/plphys/advan...

Rhizobium rhizogenes A4-derived strains mediate hyper-efficient transient gene expression in Nicotiana benthamiana and other solanaceous plants Agroinfiltration, a method utilizing agrobacteria to transfer DNA into plant cells, is widely used for transient gene expression in plants. Besides the commonly used Agrobacterium strains, Rhizobium r...

Nice preprint! Rhizobium rhizogenes A4-derived strains enable better transient expression in solanaceous plants.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

First bluesky post - some beautiful microbial isolates collected from kudzu by Dundas Lab undergrad John Samuel Anderson!

Could you add me, please? Thanks! 🧬