The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Clayton Douglas Grubb to work with Dr. Ricardo Flores at Instituto de Biologia Molecular y Celular de Plantas, in Valencia, Spain.
This project is focused on understanding how chloroplasts import RNA. Long thought of as a mere intermediate in the process by which the information stored in DNA is transformed into functional proteins, RNA has emerged as an amazingly versatile molecule with a variety of important biological roles in both information processing and biochemical catalysis. Chloroplasts are essential plant organelles that participate in the synthesis of many compounds of interest to humans, including nutrients, vitamins and medicinal compounds. These organelles are known to import both endogenous RNAs and the genomic RNAs of some plant pathogens such as viroids. The mechanics of this import process are totally unknown. Research in this area is therefore likely to have broad scientific and practical benefits. The experimental approach measures the ability of isolated chloroplasts to import viroids. Characterization of this biochemical activity is advancing two important goals. First, it is providing information on the nature of the import machinery, including its energetic requirements and the identity of its protein components. Second, structure/activity studies are establishing precisely which features of the viroid allow import. By providing the first mechanistic insights into a key step of the viroid lifecycle, as well as extending current knowledge of plant cell biology, this project will benefit agriculture by aiding efforts to fight viroid-related plant disease, and will benefit science and biotechnology by providing new ways to manipulate chloroplast biochemistry. The findings should therefore be of broad interest in both the plant pathology and chloroplast biogenesis communities.
