2009 — 2014 |
Welti, Ruth [⬀] Gadbury, Gary |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Metabolomic Profiling and Functions of Oxidized Membrane Lipids in Plant Stress Responses @ Kansas State University
Metabolomic profiling and functions of oxidized membrane lipids in plant stress responses
Ruth Welti and Gary L. Gadbury, Kansas State University Jyoti Shah, University of North Texas Xuemin (Sam) Wang, University of Missouri, St. Louis and Danforth Plant Science Center
Increasing evidence indicates that environmental stresses, such as freezing, high salinity, and pathogen infection, lead to oxidative modification of plant membrane lipids to produce "ox-lipids". In contrast to oxylipins, such as jasmonic acid and its derivatives, whose significance in plant growth and defense against stress has been well documented, little is known about the functions of ox-lipids in plants. Ox-lipids may function as mediators signaling stress responses, they may represent damage that could serve as a protective buffer against oxidative damage elsewhere in the cell, or they may be long-term modifications that might function as stress "memory". Thus, ox-lipids have the potential to be essential mediators of plant response to the environment. The goals of the research project are to understand the role of ox-lipids in plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses and to determine the function of members of two enzyme families, lipoxygenases and acyl hydrolases, which are likely to play important roles in the metabolism of oxidized lipids. The project will test the hypotheses that patterns of ox-lipids are fingerprints of individual stresses and that production and/or removal of specific ox-lipids by lipoxygenases and acyl hydrolases contributes to plant adaptation to stress. Under freezing and high salinity stress (abiotic stress) and infection by a fungal pathogen, Botrytis cinerea, and a bacterial pathogen, Pseudomonas syringae (biotic stresses), the stress-response phenotype and production of ox-lipids by wild-type plants and lipoxygenase- and acyl hydrolase-deficient mutant plants will be documented. The data will shed light on the roles of lipoxygenases and acyl hydrolases in stress responses and in production of specific ox-lipid patterns. Analysis of the stress-phenotype and ox-lipid profiles will lead to identification of ox-lipids that are candidates for mediating plant stress responses. The function of candidate lipid mediators will be tested by lipid analysis and phenotypic analysis of plants overexpressing enzymes that produce the candidate lipids and by supplementing mutant and wild-type plants with the putative mediators. The results have the potential to fill critical gaps in understanding of how lipid metabolic enzymes, cellular lipids, and their metabolites interact to influence plant performance.
Broader Impacts: Carrying out the proposed work will provide training for multiple students and postdoctoral trainees at four institutions and bring current knowledge of metabolic profiling, functional genomics, and stress biology to the classroom. It will broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in research through the McNair Program at the University of North Texas, the Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program at Kansas State University, the Des Lee Collaborative Scholarships at the University of Missouri, and the Danforth Plant Science Center NSF REU-Site program, which has achieved over 30% participation by underrepresented minority groups in the past several years. It will involve high school students in the research through the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science at University of North Texas and through the Students and Teachers as Research Scientists (STARS) program in St. Louis. Organization of mass spectral data on plant lipids, and particularly on stress-induced lipids, into a web-accessible database will provide a foundation for further investigation of the structure and function of lipids, and particularly novel lipids, and will facilitate integration of lipidomics data with other metabolomics and functional genomics data. Analytical capabilities developed in this work will become enabling technologies available to researchers worldwide via the Kansas Lipidomics Research Center. This work also will provide insight into the identity of metabolic steps with potential to enhance stress tolerance in plants and improve agricultural productivity and quality.
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2014 — 2016 |
Wurtele, Eve Nikolau, Basil Welti, Ruth [⬀] Gadbury, Gary Naidoo, Gnanambal |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Lipidomic Profiling, Dynamics, and Functions of Head-Group Acylation of Membrane Lipids in Plant Stress Responses @ Kansas State University
Membranes separate the cell from its environment and compartments within the cell from one another. In the cells of a plant, membranes are composed of lipids. These lipids also have other crucial metabolic and cellular functions that are only now being established. These lipids also have crucial metabolic and signaling functions that are only now being established. As plants develop and are exposed to environmental signals, membrane lipids are extensively chemically modified. Recent advances in lipid analysis have revealed that addition of a fatty acid to a membrane lipid, called polar lipid head-group acylation, is a major modification process, but relatively little is known about this process or its physiological significance. This project will address the hypothesis that head-group acylation of lipids functions to improve plant adaptation to environmental stress. To identify the role of head-group acylation when plants are under stress, genes encoding enzymes responsible for head-group-acylated lipid metabolism will be identified. By examining plants that are missing these genes and enzymes, in comparison to plants that contain them, the functions of membrane lipid head-group acylation in plant stress responses will be determined. These activities will identify metabolic steps with potential to enhance stress tolerance in plants and improve agricultural productivity and quality. Relevant data will be integrated into a plant functional genomic knowledge base. Further, the work will provide interdisciplinary training in biostatistics, chemistry, and biology to postdoctoral trainees, and it will broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in research through collaboration with a faculty mentor and undergraduate student at historically black Langston University.
This project aims to improve current understanding of the role of membrane lipid modification in producing and maintaining complex cell membranes, and influencing organismal performance. In the context of whole glycerolipidomes, new mass spectrometry-based approaches will be used to identify and characterize changes in lipid head-group acylation in response to a biotic stress, Pseudomonas syringae infection, and an abiotic stress, phosphate deficiency. To identify the gene product(s) responsible for head-group acylation, the lipid profiles of knockout mutants of candidate genes will be obtained and compared to the lipid profiles of wild-type plants. Data from functional analysis of the knockout mutants under stress will be correlated with lipid levels, providing additional information about the roles of head-group acylation in plant function. The effects of application of acylated head groups or head-group acylated lipids to plants also will be tested. Lipid profiling and functional data will be integrated into a novel metabolic database to expand knowledge of metabolic networks.
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