Dominique Loqué

Dominique Loqué
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | LBL · Biological Systems & Engineering

PhD

About

124
Publications
50,364
Reads
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7,680
Citations
Citations since 2017
51 Research Items
4760 Citations
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20172018201920202021202220230200400600800
20172018201920202021202220230200400600800
20172018201920202021202220230200400600800
Additional affiliations
January 2008 - present
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Position
  • Staff Scientist and Director of “Cell Wall Engineering Group”
April 2005 - December 2007
Carnegie Institution for Science
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Education
January 2001 - April 2005
Institute of Plant Nutrition
Field of study
  • Plant molecular biology and plant nutrition

Publications

Publications (124)
Article
Full-text available
Renewed interests in the development of bioenergy, biochemicals, and biomaterials have elicited new strategies for engineering the lignin of biomass feedstock plants. This study shows, for the first time, that 3,4‐dihydroxybenzoate (DHB) is compatible with the radical coupling reactions that assemble polymeric lignin in plants. We introduced a bact...
Article
Full-text available
Glycosylinositolphosphorylceramides (GIPCs) are the predominant lipid in the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane. Characterized GIPC glycosylation mutants have severe or lethal plant phenotypes. However, the function of the glycosylation is unclear. Previously, we characterized Arabidopsis thaliana GONST1 and showed that it was a nucleotide sugar...
Article
Full-text available
Background Lignin deposited in plant cell walls negatively affects biomass conversion into advanced bioproducts. There is therefore a strong interest in developing bioenergy crops with reduced lignin content or altered lignin structures. Another desired trait for bioenergy crops is the ability to accumulate novel bioproducts, which would enhance th...
Article
Full-text available
Agricultural biotechnology strategies often require the precise regulation of multiple genes to effectively modify complex plant traits. However, most efforts are hindered by a lack of characterized tools that allow for reliable and targeted expression of transgenes. We have successfully engineered a library of synthetic transcriptional regulators...
Article
Full-text available
Plants produce a wealth of biologically active compounds, many of which are used to defend themselves from various pests and pathogens. We explore the possibility of expanding upon the natural chemical diversity of plants and create molecules that have enhanced properties, by engineering metabolic pathways new to nature. We rationally broaden the s...
Article
Lignin is the primary contributor to the high cost of biofuel-production from lignocellulosic biomass. In order to study lignin removal and the release of aromatic monomers, we applied hydrocracking and ionic liquid pretreatments on Arabidopsis thaliana biomass from both wild type (WT) and a mutant (CAD cxd) defective in two cinnamyl alcohol dehydr...
Article
Full-text available
Background Single guide RNA (sgRNA) selection is important for the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing. However, in plants, the rules governing selection are not well established. Results We developed a facile transient assay to screen sgRNA efficiency. We then used it to test top-performing bioinformatically predicted sgRNAs for two...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is a promising bioenergy feedstock because it can be grown on marginal land and produces abundant biomass. Recalcitrance of the lignocellulosic components of the switchgrass cell wall to enzymatic degradation into simple sugars impedes efficient biofuel production. We previously demonstrated that overe...
Article
Full-text available
Background We previously developed several strategies to engineer plants to produce cost-efficient biofuels from plant biomass. Engineered Arabidopsis plants with low xylan and lignin content showed normal growth and improved saccharification efficiency under standard growth conditions. However, it remains to be determined whether these engineered...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Golgi lumen is the site of many different glycosylation events, including cell wall polysaccharide biosynthesis and lipid glycosylation. Transporters are necessary for the import of the substrates required for glycosylation (nucleotide sugars) from the cytosol where they are synthesized. Plants use four GDP-linked sugars to glycosylate macromol...
Article
Full-text available
Like all higher organisms, plants have evolved in the context of a microbial world, shaping both their evolution and their contemporary ecology. Interactions between plant roots and soil microorganisms are critical for plant fitness in natural environments. Given this co-evolution and the pivotal importance of plant-microbial interactions, it has b...
Article
Full-text available
Background Increasing the oil yield is a major objective for oilseed crop improvement. Oil biosynthesis and accumulation are influenced by multiple genes involved in embryo and seed development. The leafy cotyledon1 (LEC1) is a master regulator of embryo development that also enhances the expression of genes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis. We...
Article
Full-text available
Muconic acid (MA) is a dicarboxylic acid used for the production of industrially relevant chemicals such as adipic acid, terephthalic acid, and caprolactam. Because the synthesis of these polymer precursors generates toxic intermediates by utilizing petroleum-derived chemicals and corrosive catalysts, the development of alternative strategies for t...
Article
Full-text available
Background Second-generation biofuels produced from biomass can help to decrease dependency on fossil fuels, bringing about many economic and environmental benefits. To make biomass more suitable for biorefinery use, we need a better understanding of plant cell wall biosynthesis. Increasing the ratio of C6 to C5 sugars in the cell wall and decreasi...
Article
Full-text available
Naturally, many aerobic organisms degrade lignin-derived aromatics through conserved intermediates including protocatechuate and catechol. Employing this microbial approach offers a potential solution for valorizing lignin into valuable chemicals for a potential lignocellulosic biorefinery and enabling bioeconomy. In this study, two hybrid biochemi...
Article
Full-text available
Lignin in plant biomass represents a target for engineering strategies towards the development of a sustainable bioeconomy. In addition to the conventional lignin monomers, namely p-coumaryl, coniferyl and sinapyl alcohols, tricin has been shown to be part of the native lignin polymer in certain monocot species. Because tricin is considered to init...
Data
Supplemental figures. Figure A. Purity and integrity of the synthesized selgin. (A) 1H NMR spectrum of synthet ic selgin. Chemical shifts (in ppm) were assigned according to the signal of the internal standard CD3OD (d = 3.31 ppm). (B) HPLC-ESI-TOF MS analysis of selgin. Figure B. Detection of benzodioxane substructures in lignin from bmr12 sorghum...
Article
Full-text available
Tight control and multifactorial regulation of gene expression are important challenges in genetic engineering and are critical for the development of regulatory circuits. Meeting these challenges will facilitate transgene expression regulation and support fine-tuning of metabolic pathways to avoid the accumulation of undesired intermediates. By em...
Article
Full-text available
Background: BAHD acyltransferases, named after the first four biochemically characterized enzymes of the group, are plant-specific enzymes that catalyze the transfer of coenzyme A-activated donors onto various acceptor molecules. They are responsible for the synthesis in plants of a myriad of secondary metabolites, some of which are beneficial for...
Article
Full-text available
Background: BAHD acyltransferases, named after the first four biochemically characterized enzymes of the group, are plant-specific enzymes that catalyze the transfer of coenzyme A-activated donors onto various acceptor molecules. They are responsible for the synthesis in plants of a myriad of secondary metabolites, some of which are beneficial for...
Article
Full-text available
The advent and growth of synthetic biology has demonstrated its potential as a promising avenue of research to address many societal needs. However, plant synthetic biology efforts have been hampered by a dearth of DNA part libraries, versatile transformation vectors and efficient assembly strategies. Here, we describe a versatile system (named jSt...
Data
Supplementary Figures 1-3, Supplementary Tables 1-7 and Supplementary References
Article
Full-text available
Plant biomass is a large source of fermentable sugars for the synthesis of bioproducts using engineered microbes. These sugars are stored as cell wall polymers, mainly cellulose and hemicellulose, and are embedded with lignin, which makes their enzymatic hydrolysis challenging. One of the strategies to reduce cell wall recalcitrance is the modifica...
Article
The Green Revolution has fueled an exponential growth in human population since the mid-20th century. Due to population growth, food and energy demands will soon surpass supply capabilities. To overcome these impending problems, significant improvements in genetic engineering will be needed to complement breeding efforts in order to accelerate the...
Article
Full-text available
Lignin poses a major challenge in the processing of plant biomass for agro-industrial applications. For bioengineering purposes, there is a pressing interest in identifying and characterizing the enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of lignin. Hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA:shikimate hydroxycinnamoyl transferase (HCT, EC 2.3.1.133) is a key metabolic ent...
Chapter
To succeed in the marketplace, cellulosic biorefineries must be both low-carbon and economically viable. Production of liquid fuels from lignocellulosic feedstocks has increased dramatically in recent years. Between 2014 and 2015, annual production grew from less than 1 million gallons to nearly 50 million gallons (EPA, 2015). Despite this impressi...
Article
Full-text available
Cost-effective hydrolysis of biomass into sugars for biofuel production requires high-performance low-cost glycoside hydrolase (GH) cocktails that are active under demanding process conditions. Improving the performance of GH cocktails depends on knowledge of many critical parameters, including individual enzyme stabilities, optimal reaction condit...
Article
Full-text available
Biological synthesis of pharmaceuticals and biochemicals offers an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional chemical synthesis. These alternative methods require the design of metabolic pathways and the identification of enzymes exhibiting adequate activities. Cinnamoyl, dihydrocinnamoyl, and benzoyl anthranilates are natural metabolite...
Article
Plant apyrases are nucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydolases and have been implicated in an array of functions within the plant including the regulation of extracellular ATP. Arabidopsis encodes a family of seven membrane bound apyrases (AtAPY1 to 7) comprised of three distinct clades all of which contain the five conserved apyrase domains. With t...
Article
Inventors in the field of mechanical and electronic engineering can access multitudes of components and, thanks to standardization, parts from different manufacturers can be used in combination with each other. The introduction of BioBrick standards for the assembly of characterized DNA sequences was a landmark in microbial engineering, shaping the...
Article
Full-text available
Effector-triggered immunity (ETI) is activated when plant disease resistance (R) proteins recognize the presence of pathogen effector proteins delivered into host cells. The ETI response generally encompasses a defensive 'hypersensitive response' (HR) that involves programmed cell death at the site of pathogen recognition. While many R protein and...
Article
Full-text available
Lignocellulosic biomass has the potential to be a major source of renewable sugar for biofuel production. Before enzymatic hydrolysis, biomass must first undergo a pretreatment step in order to be more susceptible to saccharification and generate high yields of fermentable sugars. Lignin, a complex, interlinked, phenolic polymer, associates with se...
Article
Full-text available
The biomass of plants consists predominately of cell walls, a sophisticated composite material composed of various polymer networks including numerous polysaccharides and the polyphenol lignin. In order to utilize this renewable, highly abundant resource for the production of commodity chemicals such as biofuels, major hurdles have to be surpassed...
Article
Full-text available
Raoultella terrigena R1Gly is a diazotrophic endophyte isolated from surface-sterilized roots of Nicotiana tabacum. The whole-genome sequence was obtained to investigate the endophytic characteristics of this organism at the genetic level, as well as to compare this strain with its close relatives. To our knowledge, this is the first genome obtaine...
Conference Paper
Inducible promoters alone are insufficient regulation for many toxic transgenes, resulting in unwanted background phenotypes such as the hypersensitive response (HR) associated with effector-triggered immunity. We previously engineered HyP5SM, a completely plant-derived alternatively spliced cassette which can be inserted directly and tracelessly i...
Article
Full-text available
Reduced cell wall recalcitrance and increased C6 monosaccharide content are desirable traits for future biofuel crops, as long as these biomass modifications do not significantly alter normal growth and development. Mixed-linkage glucan (MLG), a cell wall polysaccharide only present in grasses and related species among flowering plants, is comprise...