Aerobic organisms developed systems to measure cellular oxygen levels and activAerobic organisms developed systems to measure cellular oxygen levels and activate adaptive responses in case hypoxia occurs. This condition can be caused by sudden environmental changes or associated with developmental programmes. Recent reports have revealed that complex eukaryotes, such as plants and animals, converged towards the recruitment of dioxygenase enzymes to regulate gene targets at the transcriptional level. However, while the sensing strategy is the same, the molecular identity of the components involved is different. The similarities and differences between animal and plant hypoxia machineries can be exploited to acquire better understanding of the dynamics of oxygen sensing in the two kingdoms and more precise manipulation of these mechanisms for farming proposes. <br/>Here, I plan to apply a novel approach that merges the synthetic biology framework, molecular physiology and developmental biology to transfer features of the metazoan oxygen sensing and delivery systems to plants. This strategy will be instrumental to investigate for the first time whole oxygen machineries and characterize their performance in the context of plant cells. More specifically, the proposed project expands in three distinct although interlinked directions that explore (1) the exploitation of 2-OG dioxygenase to drive selective proteolysis in higher plants, (2) the investigation of endogenous or heterologous control of chromatin accessibility by 2-OG dioxygenases and (3) the engineering of a synthetic delivery delivery system to alter oxygen provision or perception specifically to shoot apical meristems. The process of design and optimization of these synthetic oxygen machineries, and the comparison with endogenous ones, will allow pinpointing the features that enable efficient control of hypoxic responses and specifically controlling adaptive responses that ameliorate hypoxia tolerance in plants.