ArticlePLoS biology2023
How to engineer the unknown: Advancing a quantitative and predictive understanding of plant and soil biology to address climate change.
Article in PLoS biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Genetic encoding of climate-responsive stomatal developmental plasticity in tomato.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Rational Modulation of Plant Root Development Using Engineered Cytokinin Regulators.ACS synthetic biology · 2025Article
- Evaluating the impacts of environmental stresses on agriculture in the context of climate resilience.Plant molecular biology · 2025Review
- Pleiotropy, a feature or a bug? Toward co-ordinating plant growth, development, and environmental responses through engineering plant hormone signaling.Current opinion in biotechnology · 2024Review
- Targeting editing of tomatobioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Adapting enzymes to improve their functionality in plants: why and how.Biochemical Society transactions · 2023Review
- Engineering plants for a changing climate.PLoS biology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Our basic understanding of carbon cycling in the biosphere remains qualitative and incomplete, precluding our ability to effectively engineer novel solutions to climate change. How can we attempt to engineer the unknown? This challenge has been faced before in plant biology, providing a roadmap to guide future efforts. We use examples from over a century of photosynthesis research to illustrate the key principles that will set future plant engineering on a solid footing, namely, an effort to identify the key control variables, quantify the effects of systematically tuning these variables, and use theory to account for these observations. The main contributions of plant synthetic biology will stem not from delivering desired genotypes but from enabling the kind of predictive understanding necessary to rationally design these genotypes in the first place. Only then will synthetic plant biology be able to live up to its promise.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.