Current Research

My lab is conducting research to better understand the pathways and enzymes in plants that are involved in lipid biosynthesis.

Plants accumulate oil in their seeds to provide both the energy and carbon necessary for a germinating seed to grow into a plant. While seeds from crops are rich in edible vegetable oils, nature has provided the plant kingdom with a broad assortment of oil compositions, and some unusual oils may have useful industrial applications.  One focus of the Jaworski lab is to identify the genes responsible for producing unusual oils that can be used to produce a transgenic crop capable of synthesizing large quantities of these oils. In addition, the Jaworski lab focuses on obtaining a basic understanding of pathways involved in plant lipid synthesis.

Modification of seed oil composition: A key aspect of this research initiative is to obtain genes that will allow the production of unusual fatty acids in common crops such as soybean. Our approach is to prepare cDNA libraries for random sequencing and then carry out functional analysis of clones potentially involved with fatty acid modification and lipid synthesis. Our recent focus has been a family of genes from petunia encoding cytochrome P450s and acyl tranferases that are involved in the synthesis of terminal or w-hydroxy fatty acids.  We have identified the gene encoding a omega-hydroxylase that is responsible for producing very high levels of omega-hydroxy fatty acids on stigma of petunia flowers and we are using this gene to produce hydroxy fatty acids in seeds.  The omega-hydroxylase was the subject of a patent filing by the Danforth Center. In addition, we have identified genes encoding a wax synthase and glycerol-3-phosphate acyl transferases in petunia flowers and will use those in attempts to alter the oil composition of seeds.

Sphingolipid metabolism and function in plants: This research is supported by an NSF 2010 grant to scientists from five labs at four locations (see our 2010 project website for more information) and being lead by Jonathan Markham at the Danforth Center.  The goal of the project is to characterize the biosynthetic pathway for sphingolipids and study their function in plants with altered sphingolipid composition. Using a new and powerful mass spectrometer at the Danforth Center, we have developed new analytical procedures to rapidly characterize the complete sphingolipid composition of Arabidopsis.  This new tool provides us with the capability to easily analyze many Arabidopsis lines with mutations in the sphingolipid pathway.  This is providing us with a much richer understanding of this poorly understood area of plant metabolism.