Colorado State University is the newest university affiliated with the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS), becoming the latest addition to a Science and Technology Center funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) dedicated to advancing the field of digital biology.

CROPPS, led by Cornell University in collaboration with the Boyce Thompson Institute, Tuskegee University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Arizona, and now Colorado State University, is pioneering innovative tools to enhance communication with plants and their associated microbiomes. This initiative focuses on addressing the critical challenges of sustainability, resilience, and the health impacts of crop-based agriculture on both society and the environment.

Arjun Khakhar, an assistant professor of biology at Colorado State, drives the university's involvement in CROPPS through his foundational research in synthetic biology and plant science. His work focuses on redesigning plants to boost their productivity, flavor and resilience to climatic change.

He will co-lead two projects at CROPPS focused on developing groundbreaking techniques to streamline and enhance the process of plant genome editing and developing new approaches to both model and enhance the efficiency of nitrogen and water use in tomatoes.

“I am very excited to have the opportunity to work with the fantastic team at CROPPS to translate some of the tools and insights my group has been developing in model systems to crops. Demonstrating the utility of synthetic biology for crop improvement has been a central goal of plant synthetic biologists, and collaborating with other researchers in CROPPS will give us an avenue to do this,” Khakhar said.

Khakhar leads an interdisciplinary team at Colorado State University, with a diverse collective of scientists specializing in plant biology, virology, fungal biology, and synthetic biology. His lab is dedicated to understanding and communicating with complex plant mechanisms by studying new biological systems within plants and the organisms that interact with them, including viruses and fungi. His work has been featured in prominent scientific journals such as eLife, Plant Physiology, and Nature Communications.

Khakhar’s interdisciplinary approach dovetails with CROPPS research, which integrates advancements in plant science, engineering, computer science, and data analytics to transform plant biology. His projects will engage closely with CROPPS researchers in plant programming and plant systems at Cornell, the Boyce Thompson Institute and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“Dr. Khakhar is a leading innovator in the field of synthetic biology, and he adds an exciting new dimension to the research potential of CROPPS,” said director Abe Stroock, the Gordon L. Dibble ’50 Professor in the Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell. “The addition of Colorado State University to the CROPPS network further fortifies our collaborative mission to unlock the potential of plant systems for the betterment of both society and the environment."