Two Kansas National Science Foundation EPSCoR subcontracts totaling $4.2 million go to Kansas State University.
A subcontract of $1.2 million establishes the Kansas Lipidomics Research Center, one of a handful of centers for the study of lipids. Biochemistry professor Xuemin (Sam) Wang serves as the scientific director of the center. Biology professor Ruth Welti will oversee the center's analytical activities. Co-investigators from K-State, the University of Kansas and KU Medical Center will conduct lipid research projects at the center.
A subcontract of $3 million over a three-year period supports studies in a new field, ecological genomics. The principal investigators are K-State molecular geneticist Mike Herman, K-State ecologist Loretta Johnson and KU molecular geneticist Bob Cohen.
The National Science Foundation's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research provides seed money to states, and requires state matching money. The program fosters collaborations between scientific research teams, and builds the science infrastructure of a state so that it can become nationally competitive.
Sources: Mike Herman, 785-532-6741; e-mail mherman@k-state.edu;
and Loretta Johnson, 785-532-6921; e-mail johnson@k-state.edu
http://www.ksu.edu/ecogen
News release prepared by: Kay Garrett
Sidebar:
NEW RESEARCH AREA OF ECOLOGICAL GENOMICS RECEIVES $3 MILLION GRANT
MANHATTAN -- What began as friendly debate between molecular biologists and ecologists turned into an award-winning idea and the emergence of a new field of research in Kansas.
The National Science Foundation, through the life science initiative of the Kansas National Science Foundation EPSCoR, has awarded $3 million for a project that will link ecology and genomics for the first time.
No one could have undertaken ecological genomics studies even five years ago, say the lead investigators Mike Herman and Loretta Johnson, of Kansas State University's Division of Biology.
"The recent explosion of knowledge in the field of genomics made this project feasible now," Herman said. "Scientists have determined the entire gene sequence of several organisms -- including the model systems we will use -- in order to understand the biological function of genes."
Twenty-eight scientists from nine departments, 10 postgraduate students, 10 graduate students and a group of undergraduates will join the experiments as the three-year National Science Foundation study unfolds. Workshops, training seminars and additional research projects will be integral aspects of the EPSCoR program.
One of the greatest challenges for biologists today is to understand how organisms respond to environmental changes that are caused increasingly by human activities.
The primary goal of the National Science Foundation-initiative will be to identify genes that are directly involved in how plants and animals respond to this changing environment. The initiative will focus on global environmental changes that are important to grasslands in Kansas: the amount and timing of precipitation, increased nitrogen, and changes in temperature.
Ecological genomics will couple the tools of molecular genetics with ecology by taking advantage of the research platform and ongoing experimental work at the Konza Prairie Biological Station near Manhattan. Konza represents the tallgrass prairie in the National Science Foundation's network of long-term ecological research study sites around the globe.
Johnson said Konza ecologists already investigate a range of plant and animal responses to important environmental cues such as response to increases in nitrogen from fertilizer and air pollution; changes in the amount and timing of rainfall; fire and grazing.
"We hope to extend these long-term ecology studies to a new level by investigating, for the first time, the genetic responses of plants and animals to impending environmental changes," Johnson said. "Someday we hope to be able to predict organisms' responses to a changing environment and the genetic pathways responsible for the responses."
As departmental colleagues with different training and perspective on living organisms, Johnson and Herman good-naturedly challenged each other's research methods and findings. They quickly realized that bringing their two fields together could be a productive and fruitful line of research, and the National Science Foundation agreed.
At least two of the genome-world's superstars have major roles in ecological genomics research as it unfolds: the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans and the wild mustard plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
This roundworm is famous as the first organism to have its genome sequenced. It graced the cover of Science magazine in April 2000 when the sequence was published. Three leaders in the field have received the Nobel Prize. C. elegans also has the sad distinction of being the sole surviving life-form of the February 2003 crash of Space Shuttle Columbia.
Herman, a "worm guy," studies the molecular biology of C. elegans, which is a domesticated cousin of free-living soil nematodes. To understand its molecular biology, the roundworm has been studied for years under controlled laboratory conditions, not in its natural habitat. Herman will put the worm back into prairie soil in order to identify genes that are activated under various water and nutrient conditions typical of the prairie. He'll collaborate with K-State nematologist Tim Todd and soil ecologist John Blair on this project.
Stanford University researchers will help Herman mine the resulting data for gene function. "We'll get answers about how genes are regulated by growth in the soil and which genes get switched on and off under particular environmental cues," Herman said.
Johnson, an ecologist, studies plant root systems and how such environmental factors as nitrogen, rainfall, fire and grazing regulate root growth. With colleague Jyoti Shah, a K-State plant molecular biologist, Johnson hopes to take advantage of the well-understood genomes of model plants such as rice and the wild mustard and to determine if the same genes that regulate root growth in the model organisms can help them understand root growth in prairie grasses.
Shah studies Arabidopsis, the second genome superstar. Shah and Johnson will study the environmental and genetic controls over root growth, specifically how the dominant prairie grass big Bluestem is affected by grazing, drought and availability of various nutrients. Because of what is already known about Arabidopsis, the K-Staters can investigate if Bluestem root growth also is genetically controlled. They hope to identify genes important in controlling root growth in native grasses, and which genes get switched on and off under particular environmental cues.
Sources: Xuemin (Sam) Wang, 785-532-6422; e-mail wangs@k-state.edu
and Ruth Welti at 785-532-6241; e-mail welti@k-state.edu
http://www.ksu.edu/lipid/lipidomics
News release prepared by: Kay Garrett
Sidebar:
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION-EPSCOR FUNDS KANSAS LIPIDOMICS RESEARCH CENTER
MANHATTAN -- Kansas State University will house the Kansas Lipidomics Research Center established with a $1.2 million three-year grant from the National Science Foundation's Kansas EPSCoR program.
The center's core research team includes five K-State scientists and three University of Kansas scientists.
Xuemin (Sam) Wang, K-State biochemist, is the center's scientific director, and K-State biologist Ruth Welti will co-direct and oversee analytical activities. Other researchers associated with the center are K-State biologists Jyoti Shah and David Rintoul, K-State cereal chemist Susan Sun, University of Kansas pharmacology and toxicology researcher Rick Dobrowsky, Todd Williams, who directs the University of Kansas Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, and Steve LeVine, of KU Medical Center's Molecular and Integrative Physiology department.
Research on lipidomics undertaken at the new center will be supported through grants from various funding agencies.
"Having the center as part of the state's science infrastructure is going to place Kansas scientists in a much better position to compete for future funding," Wang said.
The K-State research group will focus first on profiling the lipid molecular species that constitute cell membranes as well as other lipid metabolites.
Collaborative research by University of Kansas scientists will focus on functions of lipids in animals, the roles of lipids in diseases like multiple sclerosis and globoid cell leukodystrophy, and cell growth arrest, cell differentiation or cell death.
According to Wang, lipidomics, or a high-throughput, comprehensive approach to studying lipids has gained increasing scientific attention. "Realizing that lipids play pivotal roles in regulating a wide variety of cellular processes is one of the major advances in modern biology of the last 20 years," Wang explained in a recent interview in The Scientist.
Lipids are the structural backbone for cell membranes of plants, animals and humans. They are the sources of metabolic energy, and the sources of regulators of numerous cellular functions in all organisms. Alterations in lipid molecular species and functions are associated with various human diseases -- obesity, heart disease, noninsulin dependent diabetes among them.
Within each cell, there are hundreds of types of lipids, and the composition or lipid profile changes in response to signals from the cell's environment. Because of their sheer number and vast complexity, obtaining detailed information on lipid molecular species poses a daunting problem for scientists.
The analytical tools under development at the Kansas Lipidomics Research Center will make the analytical task possible. The Center can provide high-throughput lipid-profiling capability, making it the first facility of its kind, Wang said.
"No other facility is offering comprehensive profiling of cell membrane lipids to the scientific community," Welti said.
Getting a clear understanding of lipids will help scientists begin to answer fundamental and applied questions.
"We think the work of the KLRC will help us answer basic biological questions and provide an underpinning for biotechnology that will have a big impact on agriculture and human medicine in the future," Wang said.
The facility includes three components: the analytical lab, a technology development component, and a scientific research component.
- The Analytical Laboratory uses mass spectrometric technologies to provide comprehensive, quantitative profiles of lipids quickly. The Kansas research team unveiled its lipid profiling work publicly in summer 2002. Since then, collaborations are being developed with researchers nationally and internationally.
- The Technology Development component will develop even more advanced methods of analysis. This effort will be jointly carried out by scientists both at K-State and at the Mass Spectrometry Lab at the University of Kansas. Both groups have collaborated to improve the analytical technology already in use.
- The Scientific Research component will aim at elevating research capabilities and promoting collaboration among many Kansas scientists. To that end, the Center will host meetings, workshops and seminars for professionals, and be a training facility for students and postdoctoral researchers in lipidomic strategies and mass spectrometry technology.
The study of cellular metabolites, or products of cellular activities, is an emerging new field called metabolomics. Lipidomics is part of that larger area of study.
Studying metabolite profiles provides insight to some health and disease processes. For example, biofluids like blood serum, urine and the spinal fluids are tested routinely for metabolites. As metabolomics adds to the knowledge base, new diagnostic tests can be developed to screen for indicator molecules in these samples.
Lipidomics researchers at K-State are working to identify lipids that regulate plant responses to pathogens and environmental stress and to identify plant genes involved in generating lipid regulators.
Results of a recent lipid profiling study identified the function of a plant gene that breaks down particular lipids when plants are exposed to freezing. The identification of relevant genes is an important step toward designing strategies to engineer crop plants, such as Canola, an emerging cash crop, for increased ability to withstand environmental stresses.
Sources: Mike Herman, 785-532-6741; e-mail mherman@k-state.edu;
and Loretta Johnson, 785-532-6921; e-mail johnson@k-state.edu
http://www.ksu.edu/ecogen
News release prepared by: Kay Garrett