The functional organization and control of plant carbohydrate and phosphate metabolism

“代谢”是指在任何给定时间内细胞内发生的所有酶催化的化学反应。了解细胞代谢的组织和控制对人类非常重要，因为它具有关键的应用：1)阐明并最终解决由“代谢紊乱”引起的人类健康和疾病的许多问题；2)重组DNA技术的有效生物技术应用，通过“基本代谢工程”创造“改良”的动物、植物和微生物。植物代谢工程在培育抗逆性作物以增加可持续粮食产量以满足世界快速增长的人口（同时保护淡水等宝贵资源）以及将大气中的二氧化碳回收为可再生生物燃料和能源以及大量工业原料方面发挥着关键作用。我的研究项目旨在确定植物碳水化合物和磷酸盐代谢的功能组织和控制。这是通过彻底表征关键酶的分子、调控和功能特性来实现的：1)在种子发育过程中，碳分配到重要的储存最终产物（淀粉、油和蛋白质）；2)无机磷酸盐的获取，无机磷酸盐是作物生长和发育所需的一种至关重要但对环境有限制的常量营养素。我们的研究对加拿大农业和环境保护中的问题具有重要的应用价值，包括：1)有针对性地改变我们主要油料作物（如油菜和大豆）的储油和蛋白质水平；2)开发高效利用磷酸盐的作物，迫切需要减少人类对不可再生、不可持续、污染严重、昂贵的磷肥的大量使用，但效率低下。在此授权期间，我的HQP将继续将创新的蛋白质组学，基因组学和细胞生物学工具整合到我们的研究中。这些进步需要不断的重组、训练和优化，但提供了我们可以测试的假设类型的定量改进，并为现代植物代谢生物化学中的HQP训练奠定了坚实的基础。

'Metabolism' refers to all of the enzyme catalyzed chemical reactions occurring in a cell at any given time. Understanding the organization and control of cellular metabolism is of great importance to mankind as it has crucial applications to: i) elucidating and ultimately solving many problems in human health and disease arising from 'metabolic disorders', & ii) the effective biotechnological application of recombinant DNA technology for creating 'improved' animals, plants, and microbes via 'rationale metabolic engineering'. Plant metabolic engineering is playing a pivotal role in the creation of stress tolerant crops for increasing sustainable food production for the world's rapidly expanding population (while conserving precious resources such as fresh water), as well as recycling atmospheric carbon dioxide into renewable biofuels and energy sources, and a host of industrial feed-stocks. My research program seeks to identify the functional organization and control of plant carbohydrate and phosphate metabolism. This is approached by thoroughly characterizing the molecular, regulatory, and functional properties of key enzymes controlling: i) carbon partitioning to important storage end-products (starch, oil, & protein) in developing seeds, & ii) acquisition of inorganic phosphate, a crucial but environmentally limiting macronutrient needed for crop growth and development. Our studies have significant applications to problems in Canadian agriculture and environmental protection including the: i) targeted modification of storage oil vs. protein levels in our major oilseed crops such as canola and soybean, and ii) development of phosphate-use efficient crops, urgently needed to reduce mankind's rampant but highly inefficient use of non-renewable, unsustainable, polluting, and expensive phosphate fertilizers. During this granting period my HQP will continue to integrate innovative proteomic, genomic, and cell biology tools into our research. These advances require constant retooling, training, and optimization, but provide quantitative improvements in the types of hypotheses that we can test, and a solid foundation for HQP training in modern plant metabolic biochemistry.