The functional organization and control of plant carbohydrate and phosphate metabolism

代谢是指在任何给定时间发生在细胞中的所有酶催化的化学反应。理解细胞代谢的组织和控制是非常重要的，因为它具有关键的应用：i）阐明并最终解决人类健康和由代谢紊乱引起的疾病中的许多问题。P是作物生长和发育所需的必需但环境限制性的大量营养素。我和我的HQP特别感兴趣的是识别和表征共价修饰（即所谓的翻译后修饰或PTM），这些修饰发生在酶蛋白质被活细胞合成后。这是因为PTM可以起作用以调节酶的活性、亚细胞位置、与其他蛋白质的相互作用和/或响应于各种细胞外或细胞内信号的降解。无可争议的证据表明，可逆蛋白质PTM作为整合植物细胞中信号传导、发育、代谢和胁迫反应的主要机制至关重要。我们的研究对加拿大和世界范围内的农业和环境保护问题有重要的应用，包括：i）有针对性地改变主要油籽作物（如油菜和大豆）中的储存油与蛋白质水平，以及ii）开发磷利用效率高的作物，迫切需要减少人类对不可再生，不可持续，污染和昂贵的磷肥的猖獗但效率极低的使用。在此期间，我的HQP将继续整合创新的蛋白质组学，基因组学和细胞生物学工具到他们的研究。这些进步需要不断的重组，培训和优化，但提供了我们可以测试的假设类型的定量改进，并为现代植物科学的HQP培训和职业生涯奠定了坚实的基础。

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 as it has crucial applications to: i) elucidating and ultimately solving many problems in human health and disease arising from metabolic disorders', P is an essential but environmentally limiting macronutrient needed for crop growth and development. My HQP and I are particularly interested in identifying and characterizing covalent modifications (i.e. so-called post-translational modifications' or PTMs') that occur to enzyme proteins after they have been synthesized by living cells. This is because PTMs can function to regulate an enzyme's activity, subcellular location, interactions with other proteins, &/or degradation in response to various extra- or intracellular signals. There is indisputable evidence for the critical importance of reversible protein PTMs as a major mechanism that integrates signaling, development, metabolism, and stress responses in plant cells. Our studies have significant applications to problems in Canadian and worldwide agriculture and environmental protection including the: i) targeted modification of storage oil versus protein levels in major oilseed crops such as canola and soybeans, and ii) development of P-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 their 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 and careers in modern plant sciences.