This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-15).
Intellectual Merit: Phytosterols have essential functions in plants and are used in human nutrition to lower blood cholesterol levels. They are important structural components of the cell membrane in plants and other higher organisms, and the derived steroids have vital functions as lipid hormones. Considerable progress has been made with regard to understanding the properties of individual enzymes involved in plant sterol biosynthesis. However, due to the complexity of the sterol pathway, current knowledge of its regulation is still fragmentary. The proposed research will combine mathematical modeling with experimental work to unravel the regulatory complexity of the sterol metabolic pathway. The overall goal of the research is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the regulation of plant sterol biosynthesis and to assess the relevance of these findings to sterol function in plant development. The regulation of sterol pathway regulation is integral to the understanding of many different aspects of plant development and responses to the environment. Results will provide experimental resources to enable future molecular breeding and metabolic engineering efforts targeted at manipulating sterol biosynthesis. The mathematical models developed will be made available to the scientific community to advance research in the emerging field of metabolic engineering.
Broader Impacts: Cross-disciplinary training will be provided for postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students in mathematical modeling, analytical chemistry, metabolomics and plant molecular biology, physiology and genetics. As director of the MJ Murdock Metabolomics Laboratory the PI will provide outreach to K-12 students, teachers and the general public on the current uses of high end analytical chemistry in society.
