ME: Collaborative Research: Metabolic Engineering of Floral Scent

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Floral scent is an important character for both crop plants and ornamentals. Floral scent in insect-pollinated, agronomically important plants is crucial for seed and fruit set. For ornamental plants, scent increases the plant's aesthetic value, thus directly benefiting consumers. Recent advances in the isolation of scent biosynthetic genes have opened up the possibility for the genetic manipulation of floral scent. The long-term goal of this research is to use tools of metabolic engineering in combination with metabolic flux analysis and modeling to improve and enhance floral scent in ornamental and cut flowers. Two different approaches will be used to achieve this goal: increasing the amount of pre-existing scent compounds by shifting the metabolic flux, and introducing new scent compounds into the floral scent bouquet. The research is expected to provide a quantitative description of the metabolic networks involved in scent production in petunia and carnation, and uncover the effects of targeted metabolic engineering on steady-state levels of metabolites and fluxes in the pathways. The integration of targeted metabolic engineering with metabolic flux analysis will provide a comprehensive understanding of the regulation of floral scent production in plants. Moreover, this research will fill important gaps in our understanding of floral metabolism in general, and provide powerful modeling tools for general use in the engineering of plant metabolic pathways. The research will also build a foundation for the future metabolic engineering of floral scent of crop plants cultivated for their seed, forage, or food value, with the purpose of increasing their attractiveness to pollinators and thus ensuring efficient pollination. In addition, the project will provide a significant multidisciplinary training of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral associates, including women and minorities, in plant physiology, in vivo isotopic labeling, analytical biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics and integrative modeling. The information and methodologies obtained in this project on secondary metabolism, metabolic engineering, and integrative modeling will be incorporated via WebCT into existing courses at Purdue University and the University of Michigan.