Danforth Center Receives Grants to Study False Flax, Plant Metabolomics

The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center has received two grants totaling US$1.5 million from the Missouri Life Sciences Research Board. The first of the two grants will support a project in collaboration with the University of Missouri Delta Center to investigate developing Camelina sativa or false flax as a nonfood crop and for the production of value-added biotechnology products.

Scientists at the Danforth Center are also focusing their attention on plant metabolomics. Metabolomics is the study of unique “chemical fingerprints” known as metabolites that are produced by specific cellular processes. The second grant will lead to the purchase of a state of the art instrument that will establish a “robust metabolomics platform technology”. The instrument will help scientists working to improve plants as sources of food, biofuels, industrial enzymes, biomedicinals, among others to gain a more in-depth understanding of how changes in metabolic pathways affect the system as a whole.

Read the full article at http://www.danforthcenter.org/newsmedia/NewsDetail.asp?nid=156