Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The increasing demands of a growing human population for energy, food, building materials, agricultural inputs and medicine is placing important strains on the ability of the natural world to accommodate these pressing needs. Our research will increase our knowledge about the mechanisms that plants use for producing and accumulating medicinally important secondary metabolites. These studies utilize the Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) as a model system to examine how this beautiful plant makes the remarkably complex alkaloids that have saved many human beings from devastating cancers. The knowledge allows pathways to be transferred to micro-organisms where large amounts of these anticancer agents can be produced for human use.