Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Living organisms and in particular plants are defined by the particular set of unique metabolites that they produce. While these have been classified as 'secondary metabolites' they play essential roles to the adaptations of plants for survival under different environmental conditions and under different selection pressures. Many of these metabolites, such as the anticancer agents vinblastine and vincristine that are derived from the well known Madagascar Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), have been developed into lifesaving medicines that have improved the lives of countless human beings and have helped to extend their lifespan over the past 40 years. The TissueLyser II system for high throughput disruption of biological samples will facilitate the rapid reproducible disrupting of 48 or 192 samples at a time with minimal cross contamination and the samples can be rapidly processed for RNA, protein and metabolite extraction followed by analyses that will determine gene expression, protein levels, enzyme activity and metabolite levels in a broad range of tissues and organisms. The instrument minimizes the risks of injury that might occur while processing multiple samples by more traditional and laborious methods while speeding up tedious parts of the processing of living tissues for such analyses. This research tool will improve the relatively high throughput of samples for analysis and will increase the opportunities for new discoveries within the research program to discover the regulation of monoterpenoid indole alkaloid biosynthesis in this famous medicinal plant. Ultimately this research will develop a thorough understanding of alkaloid biosynthesis in Catharanthus that will allow us to customize and to expand pharmaceutical production by mutation breeding/metabolic engineering of the parent plant or by transferring entire pathways to heterologous hosts.