Traditionally, land can be used for either crop growth or energy production. This technology optimizes the efficiency of land use by combining both. Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed solar cell designs that absorb only specific solar photons (> 2.2 eV) to create electricity, while letting through beneficial light (< 2.2 eV) for efficient crop growth.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed an operant behavioral assay to study thermosensation, pain, or avoidance and tolerance of an animal to noxious environments.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a sensor for measuring food spoilage of nuts, seeds, and oils. It measures volatile organic compounds as a biomarker of food spoilage through a simple device in only three minutes.

Within the plant kingdom, a wide variety of species possess an extraordinary ability to regenerate whole organs and tissues naturally. Invasive weeds such as Japanese knotweed can regenerate from tiny root fragments in the soil, and many gardeners’ favorites can be propagated by taking cuttings from fully-grown plants. However, this flexible ability to regenerate organs is missing from most economically important crop species, and is currently the single biggest bottleneck for plant biotechnology.  While there is an increasingly impressive array of tools to edit the genes of a plant cell, regenerating whole organs and body plans from edited cells via labor-intensive tissue culture remains a painstaking process – often requiring a year or more – and resulting in undesirable mutations and chromosome instability.  UCB researchers have discovered that complete genetic knockout of the DNA demethylation pathway in the model plant Arabidopsis dramatically enhances the ability of plant organs to regenerate after wounding. In many plants, including Arabidopsis, regeneration after wounding does not occur naturally and requires intensive tissue culture. By contrast, quadruple homozygous mutant plants harboring loss of function mutations to all four DNA demethylase enzymes capably regenerate all organs and complete body plans after cutting, even in the absence of exogenous plant hormones and tissue culture. 

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria can transform atmospheric nitrogen into fixed nitrogen, compounds which are usable by plants. For example, Rhizobium is a symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria that invade the root hairs of host plants where they multiply and stimulate the formation of root nodules. Within these nodules, nitrogen-fixing bacteria convert free nitrogen into compounds such as ammonia, which the host plant uses for its development. Legume plants such as peas and soybeans can be infected by nitrogen-fixing bacteria for such benefits. Legume crops are extremely valuable in the United States and around the world. A modest increase in crop yield could increase profits by billions of dollars. Thus, there is an interest and need to improve methods of cultivating crops and increase crop yield. A UC Santa Cruz researcher, in collaboration with The Carnegie Institution for Science, has developed improved approaches for infecting legume plants with nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

Researchers at the University of California Davis have developed a rapid growth platform that aims to decrease crop production time, allow for tunable sensory attributes, and decrease carbon emissions.

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Plants rely on systemic signaling mechanisms to establish whole-plant defense in response to insect and nematode attack. The Glutamate receptor-like (GLR) genes have been implicated in long-distance propagation of wound signals to initiate accumulation of defense hormone jasmonate (JA) at undamaged distal sites.UCB researchers have shown the ability to desensitize GLR channels, providing a potential target for engineering anti-herbivore defense in crops.

Prof. Yanran Li and colleagues from the University of California, Riverside have developed a biosynthetic method for producing different strigolactones by designing different biosynthetic pathways in engineered microbial systems. The invention includes engineered E. coli - S. cerevisiae co-culture systems for the biosynthesis of both non-canonical and canonical SLs, including but not limited to carlactone (CL), carlactonic acid (CLA), 5-deoxystrigol(5DS), 4-Deoxyorobanchol (4DO) and orobanchol. This technology allows SLs to be biosynthetically produced in large scale for use in innovative  agrochemicals such as phyto-regulators,  fertilizers, biostimulants that enhance the nutrient uptake efficiency. Fig 1: Mimicking plant strigolactone pathway distribution in the engineered E. coli-S. cerevisiae coculture.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed a nature-based, plastic-free, non-melting, reusable, sustainable, self-cleanable (anti-fungal), and biodegradable robust cooling system for the applications in cold chains. The system has comparable cooling efficiency to traditional ice and drastically reduces water consumption, prevents potential microbial cross-contamination caused by melt-water, and eliminates the use of plastic and other synthetic materials.

UC researchers have discovered a novel use of proteins denoted CasLamda/Cas12L within the Type V CRISPR Cas superfamily distantly related to CasX, CasY and other published type V sequences.  These CasLamda/Cas12L proteins utilize a guide RNA to perform RNA-directed cleavage of DNA.  The researchers have developed compounds and structures for use in in editing plant cells.

Researchers at UC San Diego in collaboration with others have constructed a new reporter RUBY that converts tyrosine to vividly red betalain, which is clearly visible to naked eyes without the need of using special equipment or chemical treatments. They demonstrated that RUBY can be used to noninvasively monitor gene expression in plants. Furthermore, they show that RUBY is an effective selection marker for transformation events.Reporters have been widely used to visualize gene expression, protein localization, and other cellular activities, but the commonly used reporters require special equipment, expensive chemicals, or invasive treatments.

Researchers at UCI have designed a high-throughput, cost-effective microfluidic platform as a research tool for performing genomic, proteomic, single-cell, pharmacological, and agricultural studies across multiple cell types.

Prof. Hailing Jin and colleagues from the University of California, Riverside have developed novel vesicle formulations to deliver antifungal siRNA as a spray so that crop damage and crop loss is minimized. These vesicle/siRNA formulations are used in Spray-Induced Gene silencing (SIGS) approaches to protect crops and post-harvest plant material from fungal pathogens and other pests. This new formulation is  an eco-friendly, effective, and cost-efficient alternative to traditional pesticides, and offers a way to target specific pathogen genes without the need for generating a GMO crop. Fig 1: External spray application of UCR SIGs (AVs-Bc-DCL1/2-dsRNA) inhibited B. cinerea virulence on tomato fruits, grape berries, lettuce leaves and rose petals compared to the water and control (YFP-dsRNA) (non-specific target sequence) treatments.

In developed countries, buildings demand a large percentage of a region's energy-generating requirements. This has led to an urgent need for efficient buildings with reduced energy requirements. In office buildings, lighting takes up 20% to 45% of the total energy consumption. Furthermore, the adoption of smart lighting control strategies such as daylight harvesting is shown to reduce lighting energy use by 30% to 50%.For most closed-loop lighting control systems, the real-time data of the daylight level at areas of interest (e.g., the office workbench) are the most important inputs. Current state-of-the-art solutions use dense arrays of luxmeters (photosensors) to monitor the daylight environment inside buildings. The luxmeters are placed on either workbenches, or ceilings and walls near working areas. Digital cameras are used in controlled laboratory environments and occasionally in common buildings to evaluate glare resulting from excessive daylight. The disadvantage of these sensor-based approaches is that they're expensive to install and commission. Additionally, the sample area of these sensors is limited to either the area of the luxmeters or the view of the cameras. Consequently, many sensors are needed to measure the daylight in a large office space.To address this situation, researchers at UC Berkeley developed a portable cyber-physical system for real time, daylight evaluation in buildings, agriculture facilities, and solar farms (collectively referred to as "structures").

Producing meat products using cells grown in culture (instead of via animal husbandry farming) has many benefits and great potential. Current cell-cultured approaches either: (1) use suspension culture to produce homogenous products that don't meet consumer taste expectations for a substitute meat, or (2) organ culture methods to create products that meet consumer taste expectations, but at unacceptably high prices. To address this situation, researchers at UC Berkeley have been developing a process by which cells are grown in free suspension, making possible the economies of scaling that result from using large stirred tanks. After growth, the cells can be assembled into desirable macroscopic structures by controlling the conditions under which the desired multiple cell types and scaffolds are mixed and dewatered. The macroscopic structures include features such as fat marbling and muscle fiber orientation as expected by meat consumers.

The inventors have developed two new CasX gene-editing platforms (DpbCasXv2 and PlmCasXv2) through rationale structural engineering of the CasX protein and gRNA, which yield improved in vitro and in vivo behaviors. These platforms dramatically increase DNA cleavage activity and can be used as the basis for further improving CasX tools.The RNA-guided CRISPR-associated (Cas) protein CasX has been reported as a fundamentally distinct, RNA-guided platform compared to Cas9 and Cpf1. Structural studies revealed structural differences within the nucleotide-binding loops of CasX, with a compact protein size less than 1,000 amino acids, and guide RNA (gRNA) scaffold stem. These structural differences affect the active ternary complex assembly, leading to different in vivo and in vitro behaviors of these two enzymes.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed new methods for sorting and drying freshly harvested almonds with high processing and energy efficiency. 

Green algae have been promoted as vehicles for the production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, food additives, vaccines, and for toxic substance remediation, and many plants are the focus of efforts to produce drought tolerant, pest resistant, or more nutritious crops. Many of these engineering efforts rely on expression of multiple transgenes (e.g. in a multistep metabolic pathway to avoid accumulation of a toxic intermediate). It can also be useful to produce two or more proteins in a particular stoichiometry, as in a heterodimer that requires equimolar production of two polypeptides. Whether the goal is to express one transgene, or several, most efforts to transform plants and algae require cotransformation of the gene of interest with a selectable marker, such as a gene that confers resistance to a drug or herbicide, or complements an auxotrophy. Unfortunately, commonly used methods for co-transformation of algae and other plants are very inefficient. UC Berkeley investigators have developed a method for polycistronic gene expression,  and show how to achieve this using the organism's own sequences, without recourse to viral elements or other foreign elements, which is important for any technology where bioproducts are generated, since these may be used on humans (cosmetics) or in humans (food additives), especially crop technology.

Prof. Juan Pablo Giraldo and his colleagues from the University of California, Riverside have developed a foliar formulation for increasing crop protection and photosynthetic performance when crops are under light, heat, and salinity stress. This is achieved by applying a nanomaterial (poly (acrylic acid) nanoceria, PNC) that interacts with plant chloroplasts to reduce abiotic stress. The nanoparticle formulation uses a novel, scalable and biocompatible approach to protect plant seeds, seedlings, and mature plants from stress.  The emerging field of nano-enabled agriculture has the potential to create crops that are protected from climate change induced stresses and have enhanced photosynthesis.   Fig 1: a, Nanoceria (PNC) increases photosynthesis and biomass in Arabidopsis plants under stress. No nanoparticles (NNP) are shown as control. b, Substantial damage to Arabidopsis plants exposed to excess light was mitigated by PNC.  

Profs. Peter Atkinson and Linda Walling at UCR have developed an in vitro rearing system on 3.5-cm and 6-cm  leaf disc plates that support egg to adult development in as little as 19 days. This system translates to a small-footprint, cost-effective rearing process, which can be industrialized, automated  and applied to other sap-feeding insects. Each plate may be used as an independent experiment or a mini-colony of a new whitefly genetic strain. Creating genetically modified whiteflies and other sap-feeding insects for genetic manipulation involves microinjecting embryos (eggs), which remain attached to excised leaf discs, which have been pretreated to remain viable throughout the whitefly life cycle.  This technology can be used to maintain colonies of whitefly in a more cost-effective way than existing approaches. In addition, this technology has been used to generate the first genetic mutants in the glassy-winged sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis, a significant pest of Californian viticulture and thus opening the possibility of developing new strategies for its control and elimination. Fig. 1A shows a wild-type male whitefly and a mutant white male whitefly, which was generated by CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis using the leaf-disc injection and rearing protocols. Fig. 1 B shows a mosaic-eyed glassy-winged sharpshooter that was generated using the same technology.     Fig. 2 Each incubator (left) can hold up to 700 experiments/mini-whitefly colonies compared to the bugdorm (right), which houses one colony/experiment per tent. One incubator would replace ~11 biosafety level 2 (BSL2) greenhouses.    

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a plant-based, fusion protein for use in the treatment of inflammatory diseases.

The inventors have constructed conjugative plasmids for intra- and inter-species delivery and expression of RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas transposases for organism- and site-specific genome editing by targeted transposon insertion. This invention enables integration of large, customizable DNA segments (encoded within a transposon) into prokaryotic genomes at specific locations and with low rates of off-target integration.

Hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha is a transcriptional regulator of the adaptive response to hypoxia. When activated under hypoxic conditions, it can turn on over 40 genes involved in a variety of physiological activities. The dysregulation or alteration by mutation can lead to pathophysiology in areas of energy metabolism, cancer, cell survival and tumor invasion.

Currently, renewable fatty acids are obtained solely from plant oils. Medium chain fatty acids (C8-C14) are typically sourced from coconut and palm oil, whereas longer chain saturated and unsaturated fatty acids are typically sourced from tallow, soy, corn or sunflower oil. Fatty acids are widely used for food, personal care products, industrial applications (e.g., lubricants, adhesives, detergents and plastics), as well as increasingly as biofuels. The demand for renewable fatty acids is rising and expanding. Given the current understanding of biological pathways it becomes possible to utilize other organisms, especially microorganisms, for the production of renewable chemicals such as fatty acids.