Grant Makes WSU A Biotech Leader
They’ve found an anti-insect warning system in tomato plants, pondered the mysteries of the anti-cancer drug taxol and germinated seeds in space.
Riding a technological revolution, they’ve glimpsed the possibility of tinkering with the genes of plants to expand the uses of more than 300,000 species.
Yet biochemists at Washington State University worry they now face the prospect of being stumped in their understanding of the basic processes by which plants work.
Scientific advances will let them change the genetic makeup of a plant, “but in many cases we don’t know what to do,” said Rodney Croteau, who is trying to find out exactly how the Pacific yew produces taxol.
Bud Ryan’s discovery of a natural defense mechanism in tomatoes could lead to the control of crop pests without pesticides.
However, he said Thursday, “There’s a tremendous amount of work still to do.
“Just because you find these processes and know that they’re there doesn’t really give you all the answers when it comes to trying to manipulate things and change them to make a better plant,” he said.
Ryan, Croteau and other members of WSU’s Institute of Biological Chemistry Thursday said they hope to significantly deepen what is known about plant systems with the help of a $1.5 million federal grant to establish a plant biochemistry research and training center.
By training dozens of undergraduate and graduate biochemists, the center will address through both teaching and research what institute Director Norm Lewis calls a “crisis in plant biotechnology.”
The funding for another 50 graduate fellowships will more than double the number of graduate students in the institute, which already has the largest concentration of plant biochemists of any academic unit in the country.
The five-year grant was awarded through a competitive bidding process by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Division of Energy Biosciences. The division set out to train more plant biochemists after a national workshop in 1992 noted that what we know about plants has not kept pace with knowledge about animals, bacteria and fungi.
Lewis said the grant will address a wide range of plant uses that includes alternate fuels, improved agricultural productivity, better fiber sources for the wood products industry, pharmaceuticals, pest control and environmental cleanup.
Lewis is head of a team of scientists studying wheat seeds germinated on the space shuttle Discovery to see how gravity’s effect on plants might be manipulated to make them more productive.
Ronald Walters of Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories at Richland said the grant improves the odds of finding a biological method of cleaning up non-radioactive organic pollutants at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.