The project is focused on understanding the molecular genetics and metabolic relationships between the intracellular and extracellular cuticular lipid networks. The latter network is restricted to a single cell layer, the epidermis of plant aerial organs. The project will build on the PI's PhD research, using sophisticated mass-spectrometric lipidomics profiling expertise developed by Dr. Kazuki Saito's research group at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Kanagawa, Japan. Plant epidermal cells express unique molecular machinery that juxtaposes the assembly of intracellular lipid components and the unique extracellular lipids that are unidirectionally secreted to the surface of the plant. Physiologically this lipid-trafficking process is genetically programmed, but can change in response to environmental pressures (e.g., drought, temperature, pathogens), making them important to agricultural crop productivity. Additionally, these lipids are chemically most akin to petroleum hydrocarbons making this research insightful towards the development of biorenewable fuels and chemicals.
Several genes have been characterized that affect the deposition of extracellular cuticular lipids in maize and Arabidopsis. To understand how these genes affect extracellular cuticular lipid assembly, the PI has developed genetic stocks of maize and Arabidopsis designed to reveal the biochemical function of several of these genes. Comprehensive intracellular lipid profiles will be analyzed via liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC/Q-TOF/MS) under the guidance of Dr. Yozo Okazaki, Research Scientist in the Saito group. Integrating these new intracellular lipid data with the already generated extracellular lipid data will provide invaluable insights on the interrelationship between intracellular and extracellular lipids as disrupted by genetic permutations, and therefore provide models on the physiological functions of these genes.
This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
