BIOFUEL PRODUCTION

Most of our modern transportation depends on fossil fuels to work. Such petroleum-based energy has limited quantitity and therfore, is not unsustainable. Tunike fossil fuel bioenergy recycles carbon from biomass, such as plant-derived lipids, to produce transportation fuel, heat, and electricity. My lab is studying new genetic strategies to create the next generation of crops able to make a sustainable amount of biomass (i.e., lipids) for biofuel production.

We investigate the impact of novel genes in Lipid Droplet production using different approaches, such as transient expression in A. thaliana leaves, stable transformation of new Arabidopsis mutants, lipid extractions/analysis, and confocal microscopy. To better understand the molecular pathways involved in this lipid increase, we are looking at the impact of the expression of selected genes on the transcriptomic level of our transgenic plants.

Representative techniques used for this project: RNA seq, RT-qPCR, western blot, confocal imaging, floral dipping, agroinfiltration, lipid extraction, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, SPE, etc.