Creating synthetic gene circuits in plants

Synthetic gene circuits have been proposed as a new biotechnological framework for the generation of organisms harbouring user-specified gene expression pathways and other genetic functions. To date, the construction of gene circuits in plants has been minimal and limited to simple switches that lack programmability and the ability to be reconfigured to process desired inputs. These features are required to introduce new behaviours or interface the input signals with host regulatory pathways. This thesis describes the successful development of CRISPR-dCas9 based circuits, which are orthogonal, highly compact, programmable, and modular, and therefore could be easily reconfigured for controlling diverse plant pathways.