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Science上文章引用了老板的研究，老板很嗨，转发给我们看
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特别搞笑，今天收到老板群发给实验室的email说有篇文章设计实验室的内容。给了链接，回头看了下，竟然有Pauly Lab。自己看了下，觉得是参加什么会议，人家对这个做植物的感兴趣，顺带写了上去。
Looking for a Sugar Rush
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Fueling up on sugar
Even though scientists have identifi ed many of the enzymes that assemble sugars in vivo,they are still sorting out exactly how they work and learning how to manipulate the synthesis of glycans in living animals or plants. Eventually, they hope to be able to control the way organisms produce glycans, in much the same way biologists have long used genetic engineering to alter the production of proteins. For example, at the ACS meeting, Markus Pauly, a chemist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, reported that his group has been making strides in reengineering the way plants make their sugars, which may enable the creation of nextgeneration
biofuels. Today’s primary biofuel, ethanol, is made by microbes that ferment the sugars in corn kernels
and sugar cane. Both of those crops compete with food crops for agricultural land, however. Researchers have worked for decades to get those sugars instead from agricultural wastes, such as wood chips and corn stovers.
But plant cell walls typically contain lignin and a form of sugars called hemicellulose that microbes that make ethanol can’t handle. Hoping to reengineer plants to produce less hemicelluloses and lignin, Pauly and his colleagues have started with the well-studied mustard Arabidopsis thaliana. Like most plants,
this one makes several different
sugar polymers, each of which
contains a sugar backbone with
extra side chain sugars dangling
off. Pauly’s group blocked the genes for the
enzymes in the mustard plant that tack on
those side chains and, not surprisingly, found
that those plants grew poorly, if at all. They
then introduced a gene from a tomato plant
for an enzyme that tacks on a sugar called
arabinose, which Arabidopsis doesn’t normally
use, to growing sugar backbones. The
mustard plants grew normally. “It doesn’t
matter what sugar is [in the side chain] as
long as there is a sugar,” Pauly says. It’s too
early to tell if this will make it possible to
design plants with more sugars that microbes
can ferment, Pauly says, but he adds that
they’re beginning such tests now.
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-330972-626336.html
上一篇：今天看到一篇science文章不错！
下一篇：今天赶场子，参加两个barbeque。EBI中国人一个，实验室一个
Looking for a Sugar Rush
------
Fueling up on sugar
Even though scientists have identifi ed many of the enzymes that assemble sugars in vivo,they are still sorting out exactly how they work and learning how to manipulate the synthesis of glycans in living animals or plants. Eventually, they hope to be able to control the way organisms produce glycans, in much the same way biologists have long used genetic engineering to alter the production of proteins. For example, at the ACS meeting, Markus Pauly, a chemist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, reported that his group has been making strides in reengineering the way plants make their sugars, which may enable the creation of nextgeneration
biofuels. Today’s primary biofuel, ethanol, is made by microbes that ferment the sugars in corn kernels
and sugar cane. Both of those crops compete with food crops for agricultural land, however. Researchers have worked for decades to get those sugars instead from agricultural wastes, such as wood chips and corn stovers.
But plant cell walls typically contain lignin and a form of sugars called hemicellulose that microbes that make ethanol can’t handle. Hoping to reengineer plants to produce less hemicelluloses and lignin, Pauly and his colleagues have started with the well-studied mustard Arabidopsis thaliana. Like most plants,
this one makes several different
sugar polymers, each of which
contains a sugar backbone with
extra side chain sugars dangling
off. Pauly’s group blocked the genes for the
enzymes in the mustard plant that tack on
those side chains and, not surprisingly, found
that those plants grew poorly, if at all. They
then introduced a gene from a tomato plant
for an enzyme that tacks on a sugar called
arabinose, which Arabidopsis doesn’t normally
use, to growing sugar backbones. The
mustard plants grew normally. “It doesn’t
matter what sugar is [in the side chain] as
long as there is a sugar,” Pauly says. It’s too
early to tell if this will make it possible to
design plants with more sugars that microbes
can ferment, Pauly says, but he adds that
they’re beginning such tests now.
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-330972-626336.html
上一篇：今天看到一篇science文章不错！
下一篇：今天赶场子，参加两个barbeque。EBI中国人一个，实验室一个
