Cytosolic invertases and the control of plant growth.

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Plants convert carbon dioxide from the air into sugars in their leaves in the process of photosynthesis. These sugars are exported from the leaf to all of the other parts of the plant (roots, stems, flower, seeds etc), where they are converted into plant components such as starch, fats, proteins and fibre. Our project concerns the initial steps in this process. At the moment we do not understand what these steps are, or what controls how much of the sugar is converted to starch, to fats, to protein, and to fibre. We have recently been studying plants that lack enzymes that may be involved in the initial steps. This has provided new and surprising information: loss of some of the enzymes has almost no effect on the plant whereas loss of others (in particular a sort of enzyme called neutral invertase) slows plant growth so the plant is very stunted. In this project we want to understand fully the family of neutral invertase enzymes: what they do, how they work and where they exist in the plant cell. In particular, we want to know why the neutral invertases are necessary for normal growth. As well as providing new information about crop productivity, our results will have implications for understanding how much sugar is stored in plants and how much is converted to useful materials such as fibre. This balance affects how we use our crops, and gives us new opportunities to improve them for our food and for the manufacture of 'green' products and biofuels.