Chemical interrogation: a new 'systems' approach to starch metabolism in germinating barley seeds.

该项目的目的是提供有助于培育新型、改良的食用和酿造用小麦和大麦的信息。小麦和大麦是英国最重要的两种粮食作物。小麦种子被磨碎，以生产面包、饼干、糕点和酱料的面粉。大麦种子部分发芽以产生麦芽，然后麦芽与酵母孵化，产生用于啤酒和威士忌生产的酒精。小麦和大麦种子的淀粉含量高达其干重的80%。当种子萌发时，这种淀粉通常被分解成糖，这些糖被种子的胚胎用来生长，产生新的幼苗。种子中淀粉分解的时间和程度对小麦面粉和大麦麦芽的生产都有非常重要的影响。用于生产面粉的小麦种子的质量取决于高淀粉含量。在潮湿的夏天，淀粉的分解过程可能在种子还在植物上时就开始了，导致面粉的质量非常差。2004年，这在英国是一个严重的问题。由于英国小麦的质量不够好，不得不为食品业进口大量小麦种子。大麦麦芽的酿造过程依赖于对淀粉分解的精确控制，这样当添加酵母时，就可以获得正确数量的糖来生产酒精。尽管多年来一直在培育酿造麦芽的理想大麦，但酿酒商仍看到了改进的空间。由于缺乏对淀粉如何在这些种子中分解的了解，提高小麦和大麦种子质量的努力受到了阻碍。这一过程是由酶进行的，尽管人们对一些单独的酶有很多了解，但我们不知道它们如何在种子内共同作用。我们的目标是使用新的科学技术，能够更清楚地了解萌发种子内部发生的事情。我们想要发现哪些酶是淀粉分解所必需的，以及它们对这一过程到底有什么贡献。我们将通过将萌发的种子浸泡在特定的化学物质中来实现这一点，这种化学物质可以防止某些酶的作用，并寻找种子中缺少某些酶的突变大麦植物。我们将研究化学处理和突变种子中的淀粉分解是如何改变的。这将为我们提供有关种子内部过程的新信息，并将使我们能够为小麦和大麦育种者提供建议，以便在未来生产更好的小麦和大麦作物。

The aim of this project is to provide information that will help in the breeding of new, improved types of wheat and barley for food and for brewing. Wheat and barley are two of the most important food crops in the UK. Wheat seeds are ground to produce flour for bread, biscuits, pastry and sauces. Barley seeds are partially germinated to produce malt, which is then incubated with yeast to yield alcohol for beer and whisky production. Wheat and barley seeds contain up to 80% of their dry weight as starch. This starch is normally broken down to sugars when the seeds germinate, and the sugars are used by the embryo of the seed for growth to produce the new seedling. The timing and extent of starch breakdown in the seed has very important implications for the production of both wheat flour and barley malt. The quality of wheat seeds for the production of flour depends on a high starch content. In a wet summer, the process of starch breakdown can start while the seed is still on the plant, resulting in a very poor quality of flour. This was a massive problem in the UK in 2004. Very large amounts of wheat seed had to be imported for the food industry because UK wheat was not of adequate quality. The process of barley malting depends on precise control of starch breakdown, so that when yeast is added the correct amount of sugar is available for alcohol production. In spite of years of breeding for the 'ideal' barley for making malt, brewers still see room for improvement. Efforts to improve the quality of wheat and barley seeds are held up by a lack of knowledge about how starch is broken down in these seeds. This process is carried out by enzymes, and although a lot is known about some of the individual enzymes we do not know how they operate together inside the seed. Our aim is to use new scientific techniques that can provide a clearer picture of what happens inside the germinating seed. We want to discover which enzymes are needed for starch breakdown, and exactly what they contribute to this process. We will do this by soaking the germinating seeds in specific chemicals that can prevent the actions of some of the enzymes, and by looking for mutant barley plants in which some of the enzymes are missing from the seeds. We will investigate how starch breakdown is altered in the chemically-treated and mutant seeds. This will give us new information about the processes inside seeds, and will enable us to advise wheat and barley breeders on producing better wheat and barley crops in the future.