Riverside, California
April 14, 2009
Grant from National Science
Foundation to support three-year study
The small flowering plant
Arabidopsis is widely used in laboratories as a model organism
in plant biology.
A member of the mustard family, Arabidopsis offers researchers
several advantages such as a completely sequenced genome, a
compact size, a life-cycle of about only six weeks from seed to
seed, easy cultivation and high seed production.
 Now
Daniel Gallie (photo), a professor of biochemistry at
UC Riverside, has received a
three-year grant of nearly $1.75 million from the National
Science Foundation to study how each Arabidopsis gene is
converted into protein and how plants control this process.
The research can help improve protein production in crops.
Protein-rich crops improve the diet of humans directly and
promote livestock productivity for a growing world population.
Besides their nutritional advantages, these crops also reduce
the environmental impact of livestock production by potentially
reducing the acreage required for agriculture.
“Understanding how most genes, out of the more than 25,000 genes
in Arabidopsis, are converted into protein will be important in
understanding how plants control protein synthesis,” Gallie
said. “This knowledge is essential in improving protein
production in crops.”
With the advent of the complete sequence of the genome of
Arabidopsis and other plant species, researchers are now in a
position of being able to understand how every gene in an
organism is converted into protein.
“This, in conjunction with the development of other recent
technologies, such as the ability to identify mutants in most
genes as well as to analyze virtually all genes in Arabidopsis
on a chip no larger than a fingertip, makes such a study
possible for the first time,” Gallie said.
He explained that the process of protein production involves
many steps and requires multiple factors to carry out the
synthesis.
“Our approach will identify which steps and which factors are
involved for every gene,” he said.
Gallie is the principal investigator of the National Science
Foundation grant. UCR will manage the multi-investigator project
that also involves researchers at three other universities: The
University of Texas at Austin; the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville; and the University of Arizona.
UCR has received $569,681 from the National Science Foundation
for the first year of Gallie’s research project. Funding in
subsequent years ($581,775 in 2010 and $592,854 in 2011) is
contingent on the availability of funds and scientific progress.
A portion of the grant will support graduate students and
postdoctoral researchers in Gallie’s lab.
Gallie received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from UC Davis in 1985.
He joined UCR in 1990 after completing postdoctoral appointments
at the John Innes Institute, United Kingdom, and Stanford
University, Calif. He is a fellow of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American
Association of Plant Physiologists as well as the American
Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
He has published more than 100 research articles in
peer-reviewed journals. |
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