MU scientist awarded $1.2 million grant for oil-seed research
Study may build foundation for oil alternatives and increased profits for agricultural industry

There may come a day when soybean oil is a regular fuel source for automobiles. Scientists must first understand more about the complex process of seed-filling – the developmental process during which a plant seed produces and accumulates protein and oil – in oil-seed plants.

In late August, 2003, Jay Thelen, associate director of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Proteomics Center and research assistant professor in Biological Sciences, received a 2003 Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Program to study seed-filling. This award is reserved for scientists who earned their doctorate less than five years ago and whose research proposal demonstrates scientific importance and relevance to plant genomics.

The award includes a $1.2 million grant to finance Thelen’s exploration of the poorly understood process of seed development during which an initially carbohydrate-rich seed is transformed into one consisting primarily of protein and oil. Thelen and his research team will map and profile hundreds of proteins found in the four diverse seeds – soybean, castor, canola and arabidopsis – to acquire a consensus of the metabolic 'blueprint' directing some of these seeds to produce very high quantities of oil.

Seeds use this storage oil as energy for germination. If this developmental process was better understood, scientists also could learn to maximize this natural resource.

"Vegetable oils are renewable, inexpensively produced commodities that have great potential as alternatives to petroleum for industrial feedstock and combustible fuel," Thelen said. "Since the carbon in vegetable oils is derived from the air we breathe, combustion of these oils does not increase atmospheric carbon dioxide."

Thelen said that if scientists understood the oil-seed development process, it is possible they could genetically modify oil-seeds to have higher nutrition content or to produce higher quantities of oil, which could result in millions of dollars for the agricultural industry.

This five-year project is scheduled to begin Oct. 1. Post-doctoral scientists, graduate and undergraduate students will work on the project.

"A definite component of this project is to involve students at the undergraduate level and to promote the teaching of plant biology and proteomics," Thelen said.

2003

Additional links:

MU Proteomic Center
Division of Biological Sciences
National Science Foundation

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