This U.S.-Mexico award will support Dr. Daniel Schachtman of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in a research collaboration with Dr. Bronwyn J. Barkla of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. The researchers intend to work on several transport proteins (KUPs) that are involved in potassium uptake and cellular equilibrium.
Potassium is an essential mineral for both animal and plant nutrition. Plants require large quantities of this mineral, which they acquire through root uptake from soils. Several families of transporters are involved in moving potassium into cells and around the plant. The KUPs (potassium uptake permeases) are a major family of proteins involved in potassium uptake into cells, a process that drives cell expansion and plant development. The proposed collaboration will focus on methods for the membrane localization of the KUP proteins, an important objective since little is known about which membranes these proteins are located on. The knowledge gained will help to understand their function fully. The collaborators will benefit from the Mexican lab's expertise in plant membrane transporter biochemistry and the St. Louis lab's expertise in plant molecular and cell biology. A postdoctoral fellow and a student will take part in the exchange and will be trained in membrane biochemistry.
