Carolyn Lee-Parsons
Northeastern University, MA·Plant Science & Agriculture
When insects or herbivores attack, plants shift energy away from growth and toward making defensive chemicals. Because this is costly, plants tightly control when and how much they produce.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Biochemistry
Engineering
- Topics
Catharanthus roseus
Madagascar periwinkle
terpenoid indole alkaloids
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Identify transcription factors, proteins that switch genes on or off, that control production of terpenoid indole alkaloids in Catharanthus roseus during the plant's defense response.
- Design, build, and test a CRISPR-dCas tool, a non-cutting CRISPR system that dials gene activity up or down, to control several transcription factors at once but independently.
- Apply the validated CRISPR-dCas tool in transgenic C. roseus plants or tissue cultures to reprogram alkaloid regulation and enhance production of compounds such as vinblastine and vincristine.
More about the research
How plants coordinate this defense response so quickly and efficiently at the molecular level is the central question here. The answer also matters for medicine. The Madagascar periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus, makes terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs), defense compounds that include the cancer chemotherapy drugs vinblastine and vincristine.
Why it matters
Vinblastine and vincristine, chemotherapy drugs made by Catharanthus roseus, are valuable medicines produced only in small amounts by the plant. Learning to reprogram how the plant controls alkaloid production could lead to strategies for producing more of these compounds. The CRISPR-based tool could also help other plant scientists, including those working toward hardier crops.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Steven Strauss
Oregon State University, OR·Plant Science & Agriculture
Screen about 100 sequenced wild Agrobacterium strains for their ability to transform poplar and induce transgenic shoots, and identify the strains with the highest rates.
Madan Kharel
University of Maryland Eastern Shore, MD·Biochemistry
Identify the biosynthetic building blocks of manzamine A's beta-carboline unit and five-ring core using isotope incorporation experiments in Micromonospora sp. M42.
Jonathan Myers
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Ecology & Evolution
Determine how leaf secondary chemistry, the defense compounds that are not needed for basic growth, shapes local interactions among neighboring trees, by combining leaf metabolomics with growth and survival data from mapped forest plots.
The school
Northeastern University: 27 labs on PI Pages, $347M a year on research, 251 research doctorates a year.
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