One Carbon Metabolism

A multi-disciplinary project aimed at plant metabolic engineering. Five investigators combine expertise in molecular biology, biochemistry and metabolism modeling to understand the flow of one-carbon units into, through and from the tetrahydrofolate pool in plants. This metabolic pathway is central to the generation and distribution of 1C units, methyl groups, for a number of plant-specific pathways with high flux rate, such as lignin or glycine-betaine synthesis and accumulation.

Emphasis is not only on the tetrahydrofolate-associated pathway, but also on the active methyl cycle through which methyl groups exit into various other pathways. We also consider the entry of 1C units through formate, formaldehyde or via serine-glycine conversions, which may be correlated with photorespiration.

We have studied the pathway in the past using maize and tobacco lines, mutants and transgenics in which particular genes have been silenced. With the completion of the Arabidopsis genome sequence, more emphasis will be directed towards finding and characterizing Arabidopsis KO mutants.