Production of Biodegradable Thermoplastic in higher plants

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This is a Small Grant for Exploratory Research. Bacterial genes for poly-beta-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) will be transferred from the bacterium Alcaligenes eutrophus into the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. It will then be possible to determine whether or not these genes can be expressed in plants, and whether or not the PHB made is stable. If these preliminary experiments are successful further experiments would be undertaken to maximize the concentration of PHB in the plant tissues. PHB forms a biodegradable plastic and efficient expression in plants could lead to reducing its costs to practical levels. These experiments could also help answer the question of why plants abandoned PHB as a storage compound in favor of starch and oils.