Research

The Platform is committed to addressing key scientific questions related to improving plant traits and enhancing agricultural productivity using genome engineering technologies. It focuses on plant cell culture and transformation, plant molecular biology research, and the development of innovative gene transformation systems in a variety of crop species, to tackle critical scientific issues in plant trait improvement and agricultural productivity, and promote the development of sustainable agriculture.

The first phase of the new park is planned with 100 mu (approx. 6.7 hectares) of experimental fields, focusing on cutting-edge areas of biological agriculture, smart agriculture, and AI agriculture, including agricultural synthetic biology, creation of new super soybean germplasm, and duckweed biotechnology. It is committed to building a full-chain platform for translating research from the laboratory to the dining table. By collaborating with enterprises to promote technology implementation, cultivating new agricultural science talents, and exploring the “future agriculture + urban horticulture + ecological agriculture” model, the park effectively fulfills the university’s responsibility to serve local economic and social development, and jointly builds a highland for research incubation, a demonstration platform for science outreach, innovation, and entrepreneurship, as well as a showcase for agricultural modernization.

Guided by the key scientific questions and rate-limiting steps in the design and development of plant and microalgal cell factories, the Laboratory targets bottlenecks in the field. It carries out research on the mechanisms of high accumulation of protein and polyunsaturated fatty acids (greening, biosynthesis, transport, and storage) in soybeans and microalgae, modifies and optimizes photosynthetic chassis cells, and develops these systems for the efficient production of high-value recombinant proteins and DHA/EPA. The research results will be applied to the green manufacturing of important pharmaceutical and medical proteins, as well as health-promoting proteins and lipid compounds.

The Joint Laboratory for Cross-germplasm Synthetic Biology is committed to breaking the boundaries of traditional breeding and species. Through innovative distant grafting mutagenesis breeding technology, it has successfully grafted soybeans onto non-leguminous plants, creating a new path for intergeneric grafting (the Chinese character “逾” means crossing and transcending). On this basis, the Laboratory systematically mines and identifies key genes regulating high-yield traits and promotes their application in crop breeding. To date, it has successfully cultivated super-high-yield soybean varieties with a yield of more than 350 kg per mu, demonstrating strong breeding potential and broad industrial prospects. The platform integrates cutting-edge methods including molecular breeding, bioinformatics, gene editing, and synthetic biology to build a future-oriented agricultural biotechnology R&D system.

The Guangdong Provincial Pilot Platform for Biomanufacturing consists of four sub-platforms: the Intelligent Microbial Pilot Platform, the Functional Macromolecule Pilot Platform, the Green Biomass Methanol Pilot Platform, and the Intelligent Plant Pilot Platform. It encompasses the construction of an intelligent vertical plant factory, providing key support for innovation in the future biomanufacturing field.