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的、改良的食用和酿造小麦和大麦类型的信息。小麦和大麦是英国最重要的两种粮食作物。小麦种子被磨成面粉，用来做面包、饼干、糕点和调味汁。大麦种子部分发芽产生麦芽，然后与酵母一起孵育产生用于啤酒和威士忌生产的酒精。小麦和大麦种子含有高达80%的干重淀粉。当种子发芽时，这种淀粉通常被分解成糖，并且糖被种子的胚用于生长以产生新的幼苗。种子中淀粉分解的时间和程度对小麦粉和大麦麦芽的生产具有非常重要的意义。用于面粉生产的小麦种子的质量取决于高淀粉含量。在潮湿的夏天，淀粉分解的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。这是2004年英国的一个大问题。由于英国的小麦质量不够，食品工业不得不进口大量的小麦种子。大麦制麦芽的过程取决于对淀粉分解的精确控制，因此当添加酵母时，可以获得正确量的糖用于酒精生产。尽管多年来一直在培育用于制造麦芽的“理想”大麦，但啤酒酿造商仍然看到了改进的空间。提高小麦和大麦种子质量的努力因缺乏关于淀粉在这些种子中如何分解的知识而受到阻碍。这个过程是由酶完成的，虽然我们对一些酶有很多了解，但我们不知道它们在种子中是如何一起工作的。我们的目标是使用新的科学技术，可以更清楚地了解发芽种子内部发生的事情。我们希望发现淀粉分解需要哪些酶，以及它们对这一过程的贡献。我们将通过将发芽的种子浸泡在特定的化学物质中来实现这一点，这些化学物质可以阻止某些酶的作用，并通过寻找种子中缺少某些酶的突变大麦植物来实现这一点。我们将研究淀粉分解是如何改变化学处理和突变种子。这将为我们提供有关种子内部过程的新信息，并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.