Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Plants and microalgae are important sources for new bioactive molecules, which have gained popularity over the years due to their enormous potential as antiviral, immunosuppressive, anti-oxidant, enzyme inhibitors, herbicide, and anti-microbial agents. Among them, specialized metabolites (SM) such as those found in medicinal plants are widely used for various applications and often produced in nature in the plants exposed to biotic and abiotic stress factors. Crude plant extracts usually contain complex mixture of different bioactive SM and efficient systems are necessary to screen those plant materials. The rapid and accurate detection of bioactive SM is crucial in phytochemical investigations. Efficient screening of plant extracts is performed using chromatographic methods such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in combination with mass spectrometry (MS). HPLC-MS provides a new powerful approach for the rapid qualitative determination and identification of unknown SM in plant extracts through efficient separation capabilities of HPLC and exact structural characterization by MS from a small amount of plant sample extracts. The present grant application aims to support the development of a PlatfoRm fOr Metabolites Analyses hereafter referred to as PROMA. PROMA will support the diverse but complementary research programs on SM from microalgae and plant cells, which are led by the professors I. Desgagné-Penix (IDP), and T. Missihoun (TM) at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). PROMA comprises a HPLC-MS system necessary for the NSERC-led research programs of the co-applicants, which address very distinct questions (plant metabolism and synthetic biology & plant response to stress), but the basic phytochemical analyses used to study these questions are similar. For example, PROMA will be used for untargeted and targeted metabolomic study, high-throughput screening, identification, and quantification of several different types of SM such as alkaloids, cannabinoids, fatty acids, and phenolic compounds that are present at traces level in samples. The PROMA platform will provide accurate, sensitive and specific data in terms of detection, identification and quantification about specialized metabolites for research involving various species of bioengineered microalgae cells, fungal cells, callus, and plant tissues. Additionally, PROMA will be used by additional researchers involved in organic chemistry, forensics, biomedical and environmental sciences to obtain top quality data. This will lead to important advances in these disciplines. In addition to these advances, a large number of students will be trained to perform basic studies assays using PROMA and to acquire highly transferable skills that are required for all biochemistry researchers; thus, making them as future scientists with competitive and high-tech caliber formation.