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Inqui r y I s sue 2 | 2015
Inqui r y I s sue 2
|
2015
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Graduate research assistants Daniel Freppon, left, and Brett Boote in Emily Smith’s research group use Raman
spectroscopy to study growing corn plants. The technology allows measurement of chemical composition within the
plant without disrupting its growth cycle.
iomass holds great promise
as a petroleum
replacement, but unlocking its true potential
remains a puzzle. A group of researchers at Iowa
State University and Ames Laboratory hope to
develop the pieces of that puzzle to create a clearer picture
of what takes place within a plant and how that applies to its
downstream uses as biomass.
The $1.8 million, three-year project, funded by the
Biological and Environmental Research program within
the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, brings
together a diverse team of Iowa State plant scientists
and computational experts, as well as analytical chemists
from Ames Laboratory. The group will explore the
fundamental ways plants produce and store energy, how
to potentially optimize those metabolic processes, and
then compile the vast amounts of information collected
in an accessible format.
“It’s very fundamental science,” said Basil Nikolau,
director of ISU’s Center for Metabolic Biology and one of
the principal investigators on the project. “Everyone can
easily recognize a plant, but as you use ever more powerful
microscopes to look at it in more minute detail, down to the
molecular level within individual cells, you lose context of
it as a plant. So we’re looking for a way to represent these
details within the overall context of the plant.”
Plants use photosynthesis, a process fundamental for
most life forms on Earth, to capture sunlight and convert it
to chemicals. But how does that happen?
“We know the initial chemistry involves separating
charged particles across a membrane,” Nikolau said. “At its
core, this project will develop analytical imaging technologies
to visualize the organization and dynamics of the membrane
that enables this eloquent dance of molecules in and across
the membrane to convert sunlight to chemistry.”
Though not useful as a biomass source, the team is
studying Arabidopsis as a model system. The plant’s genome
has been mapped and it readily lends itself to study. The
group is also studying corn, another plant with a vast
amount of genetic background information, and a crop that’s
important to Iowa and as a potential biofuel source.
“You can grow it in a small space and it grows quickly,”
Nikolau explained of Arabidopsis, “so you can produce six
to eight generations in a year. It’s an ideal plant to study,
and what we discover is generally applicable to other crops
as well.”
Specifically, the group is using Arabidopsis plants
that have been genetically altered to boost autophagy, a
process plants use to survive resource (carbon or nitrogen)
limitations.They’ll look at how the plants use a vesicle
called an autophagosome to conserve biomass and energy to
survive the resource deficiencies.
Analysis of the plant material relies on the technical
expertise of a cadre of Ames Laboratory researchers. Using
techniques such as Raman spectroscopy and stimulated
emission depletion (STED) fluorescence lifetime imaging
as well as more traditional mass spectroscopic methods,
they are able to generate detailed information of not only the
chemical makeup within the plant, but also the processes
and changes taking place within the living plant throughout
its growth cycle.
“Ideally, we want to be able to measure the plant as
it’s actually growing, without disrupting it or extracting
Solving the Biomass Puzzle
B Y K E R R Y G I B S O N
B
Iowa State University plant scientists (l-r) Eve Syrkin Wurtele,
Basil Nikolau and Diane Bassham display plant materials being
studied in a campus greenhouse where the plants are grown.
“we want to visualize ...this eloquent dance of molecules in and across
the membrane ...”
Basil Nikolau,
Director of ISU’s Center for Metabolic Biology