Lessons in Transport and Plant Membrane Bioengineering

There is now a wealth of knowledge for plant membrane transport, its kinetics, molecular components and structural mechanics, and how it contributes to virtually every aspect of plant physiology. Yet, despite its deep foundation, this knowledge has barely been tapped from the perspective of bioengineering and its applications. The gap in research is all the more surprising, as membrane transport by its very nature is modular, ideally suited to application through bioengineering and synthetic biology. Here I address the conceptual barriers of entanglements inevitable with solute transport that operates across a common membrane and of membranes in series. These entanglements give rise to unexpected, and often counter-intuitive, outcomes for the plant. Understanding their origins is therefore a key step to any rational analysis and practical intervention. Of the lessons for bioengineering, first and foremost are the importance of paired pathways, or modules, that accommodate opposing solute flux, and of kinetic interactions intrinsic to the voltage sensitivities of the majority of membrane transport processes. Armed with these insights – and with the tools of mechanistic modelling with which to examine each entanglement – transport bioengineering is readily accessible for exploration.