Implementing nitrogen fixation into cereals is a decades-old biotechnology aspiration thought to benefice worldwide food supply at low environmental cost, although the technical challenges are difficult to dismiss. In 2012, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a proof-of-concept proposal to engineer and test nitrogenase components in yeast. Our results showed that it was possible to genetically modify yeast to deliver nitrogenase component II (NifH) into the cell mitochondria and to isolate it in a functional form. These results opened a new research line and a new funding partnership to this day.

Several nitrogenase components have now been proved functional in yeast mitochondria. Currently, research has scaled up to other organisms and model systems, including plant cell cultures, Arabidopsis thaliana, tobacco, and rice, in which the strategy of targeting nitrogenase related proteins to mitochondria or chloroplasts is proving successful.

Over the years our lab has multiplied its technical capacities. From a classic hard-core nitrogenase biochemical laboratory, used to employ molecular biology tools to address basic nitrogenase questions, to a multidisciplinary laboratory in which synthetic biology, plant science, microbiology, structural biology, and other tools are used on a daily basis to address very complicated scientific questions. As of today, the Gates foundation has funded three phases of the Biological Nitrogen Fixation Cereals project (BNF Cereals I, II, and III).

Such an ambitious project is beyond the capabilities of a single research group. We are fortunate that a number of prominent scientists have joined efforts in a consortium that, over the years, included molecular biologist Dennis Dean (Virginia Tech, USA), plant metal transport expert Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain), biochemist Leo Curatti (CONICET, Argentina), plant scientist Elena Caro (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain), and cereal specialist Paul Christou (Universidad de Lleida, Spain). Moreover, specific research partners including synthetic biology scientist Chris Voigt (MIT, USA), chemist Alex Guo (Carnegie Mellon University, USA), and structural biologist Yvain Nicolet (IBS Grenoble, France) are also essential for the progress of this project.