Current Research and Scholarly Interests
The goal of the group is to carry out a comparative analysis of carbon and nitrogen transport and metabolism and its regulation using a fluxomics approach. FRET sensors are used to measure the effect of individual genes (in high throughput) on flux. Model organisms/systems to be compared are yeast cells, mammalian cell cultures and intact roots of Arabidopsis. The goal to to uncover regulatory networks controlling flux through the metabolic pathways in order to provide a solid basis for metabolic engineering. In parallel, high throughput approaches are used to analyze the physical interaction network of membrane proteins (including receptors and transporters) with the signaling networks. In addition phosphoproteomics is being used to determine the changes in phosphorylation patterns induced by chanegs in nutrient supply. These three major approaches are used to generate an advanced network of carbon and nitrogen signaling.
