Faculty Member Receives USDA Grant
Elsbeth Walker has been awarded a one-year grant for $125,017 from the USDA to study iron uptake in plants.
Adequate iron uptake by crop plants is necessary for optimizing crop yields and for ensuring that edible crops contain adequate amounts of iron for the diets of both humans and livestock. Iron nutritional status of crop plants is determined both by the efficiency with which they can take up iron from the soil, and the efficiency with which they use iron within their organs and tissues. The Gramineae (grasses), which are among the world's most important crop plants (*e.g.*, rice, maize, and wheat), take up iron by a mechanism that is fundamentally different from that of other plant species. Evidence is accumulating that grasses also accomplish internal iron translocation using mechanisms that are distinct from those used by non-grasses.
The purpose of this study is to identify and characterize the unique molecular mechanisms that grasses use for internal iron movement. Given the importance of grass crops, which include the world's major grain crops, maize, wheat, rice and barley, elucidation of the unique processes that grasses use in overcoming iron deficiency stress is essential. We are testing the hypothesis that the Yellow Stripe-Like (YSL) genes in maize can mediate the transport of iron-PS complexes internally. We choose to examine this family because the founding member of the YSL family, maize YS1, transports Fe(III)-PS complexes and is responsible for the primary assimilation of iron in maize. The possibility that YSLs expressed in the internal tissues of grasses can mediate Fe(III)-PS transport has not been carefully examined.
