From Systems Biology to Feedstock Improvement.

Systems biology provided new solutions for high throughput gene function and regulatory network analysis to derive target genes and pathways for crop and feedstock improvement. We hereby present our latest progresses in developing systems biology platforms and explore the possibility of using these platforms to facilitate breeding and genetic modification of bioenergy feedstock. Several novel platforms for proteomics, transcriptomics and interactomics studies have been developed in our lab for gene discovery and network construction to understand the regulatory mechanisms for biological processes. We hereby focus on the computational modeling of gene-regulatory network and the novel high-throughput interactome mapping platforms. These platforms have enabled us to quickly identify multiple genes involved in abiotic stress, growth, insect and pathogen resistance. For example, we have employed the networks to reveal that protein degradation regulation in the membrane is closely relevant to the plant defense processes. In addition, the interactome mapping method is being adapted to the bioenergy feedstocks like sorghum and switchgrass to allow the comparative analysis of systems level regulation of stress responses and plant growth among different crop and feedstock species. The comparative systems biology offered a potentially novel solution to guide the breeding and GM improvement of bioenergy feedstock at the post-genome era.