This award will support a two-year cooperative research project between Professor Dewey D. Y. Ryu and colleagues at the University of California, Davis, and Professor Shintaro Furusaki, University of Tokyo, and co-workers at other Japanese universities. The project involves multi-disciplinary basic research in plant biotechnology. Major focus will be on the development of a knowledge base having broad application to bioprocess technology for the production of important secondary metabolites from genetically improved plant cell lines. Secondary metabolites are cellular metabolic products not essential to the cell's growth and survival, in contrast to primary metabolites, which are. Some secondary metabolites have been found to be very useful as medicinals, coloring and flavoring agents, components for cosmetics, and other economically important products. The Japanese are at the forefront in research and development in this area. The collaborating U.S. and Japanese faculty members in this current project have collective expertise in plant biotechnology, plant biochemistry, plant genetics, plant cell biology, and biochemical engineering. The research program will focus on (1) biochemical design and genetic construction of plant cells for efficient production of secondary metabolites of medical and economic importance under bioreactor mass cell cultivation conditions; (2) design and development of a novel bioreactor system suitable for large-scale plant cell cultivation; and (3) fundamental bioprocess engineering studies on the plant cell bioreactor system and bioprocess optimization for the most efficient production of secondary metabolites. This project is expected to establish a collaborative research program and a close working relationship between U.S. and Japanese scientists in the area of plant biotechnology. It aims for a significant contribution toward advancement of our understanding of generic principles of plant biotechnology which can be translated to biotechnology engineering practices for useful application, especially for the production of secondary metabolites of economic and medical importance.
