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Trehalose in Certain Rice Strain Protects it from Drought E-mail

Ray Wu, 79; developed rice strains with potential to increase world supply

Cornell University
Ray Wu'HE MADE ENORMOUS CONTRIBUTIONS': The strains of rice that Ray Wu produced with his research are now being cross-bred with commercial rice varieties in several countries in order to introduce their desirable traits into widely used strains.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 18, 2008
Cornell University geneticist Ray Wu, a pioneer in genetic engineering who developed pest-, drought- and salinity-resistant rice strains that are poised for widespread use throughout the world, died of cardiac arrest Feb. 10 at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 79.

The new strains have the potential to sharply increase the supply of rice, which is the staple food for more than half the world's population.

"Where rice is grown, everyone knows Ray Wu," said Cornell geneticist Susan McCouch. "He made enormous contributions to the development of rice transformation systems that are widely used to address crop production constraints throughout the rice-growing world."

In 1970, Wu developed the first method for determining the nucleotide sequence of DNA. His technique was adopted and made more efficient by Frederick Sanger, who received the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his efforts.

During the 1980s, Wu pioneered techniques for transferring foreign genes into rice. In one study, he inserted into rice a potato gene for a protein called proteinase inhibitor II. The rice then produced the protein, which interferes with the digestive process of the pink stem borer, a common rice pest.

In a second study, he inserted a barley gene that enabled rice plants to produce a protein that makes them salt- and drought-resistant so they can grow in salty soil and recover quickly from dry conditions.

A third study increased the tolerance of rice for drought, salt and heat by introducing the bacterial gene for a sugar called trehalose.

Special promoters were inserted along with the gene so that the sugar is produced only when the rice plants need it.

Wu said the technology could easily be extended to a variety of other grain crops to improve their output.

The strains of rice produced by Wu are now being cross-bred with commercial rice varieties in countries to introduce these desirable traits into widely used strains. The resultant varieties could be in commercial use within as few as five years, McCouch said.

Wu also founded the China-United States Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Examination and Application program, which during the 1980s brought more than 400 top Chinese students to the U.S. for graduate study. That program produced more than 100 faculty members for Chinese universities.

In advisory roles to both the Chinese and Taiwanese governments, Wu was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Molecular Biology, the Institute of Bioagricultural Sciences of Academica Sinica in Taiwan and the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing.

He also served as a scientific advisor to several other Chinese institutions.

Ray Jui Wu was born Aug. 14, 1928, in the city then called Peking. He came to the United States in 1948 at the urging of his father, who believed the son could get a better education here.

He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Alabama in 1950 and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He worked at Penn, MIT and the Medical Research Council Laboratory in Cambridge, England, before joining Cornell in 1966. He spent the rest of his career there, working up until the time of his death.

He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1961, but retained close ties with China throughout his career.

He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Christina; a son, Dr. Albert Wu; a daughter, Alice Wu; and three grandchildren.

Source thomas.maugh@latimes.com
Trehalose published paper abstract - Organization and mobility of water in amorphous and crystalline E-mail

Nature Materials 5, 632 - 635 (2006)
doi:10.1038/nmat1681

Organization and mobility of water in amorphous and crystalline trehalose

Duncan Kilburn, Sam Townrow, Vincent Meunier, Robert Richardson, Ashraf Alam and Job Ubbink

The disaccharide trehalose is accumulated by microorganisms, such as yeasts, and multicellular organisms, such as tardigrades, when conditions of extreme drought occur. In this way these organisms can withstand dehydration through the formation of an intracellular carbohydrate glass, which, with its high viscosity and hydrogen-bonding interactions, stabilizes and protects the integrity of complex biological structures and molecules. This property of trehalose can also be harnessed in the stabilization of liposomes, proteins and in the preservation of red blood cells, but the underlying mechanism of bioprotection is not yet fully understood. Here we use positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy to probe the free volume of trehalose matrices; specifically, we develop a molecular picture of the organization and mobility of water in both amorphous and crystalline states. Whereas in amorphous matrices, water increases the average intermolecular hole size, in the crystalline dihydrate it is organized as a confined one-dimensional fluid in channels of fixed diameter that allow activated diffusion of water in and out of the crystallites. We present direct real-time evidence of water molecules unloading reversibly from these channels, thereby acting as both a sink and a source of water in low-moisture systems. We postulate that this behaviour may provide the overall stability required to keep organisms viable through dehydration conditions.

 

1.       H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TL, UK

2.       Nestlé Research Center, Vers-chez-les-Blanc, CH-1000 Lausanne 26, Switzerland


Source
Trehalose Can Extend Shelf Life of Other Sugars E-mail

J Zhejiang Univ Sci B. 2006 February; 7(2): 85–89.
Published online 2006 January 19. doi: 10.1631/jzus.2006.B0085.

 
Copyright © 2006, Journal of Zhejiang University Science

 

Crystallization inhibition of an amorphous sucrose system using raffinose*
K.M. Leinen and T.P. Labuza†
Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA
†E-mail:tplabuza@umn.edu

Abstract

The shelf life of pure amorphous sucrose systems, such as cotton candy, can be very short. Previous studies have shown that amorphous sucrose systems held above the glass transition temperature will collapse and crystallize. One study, however, showed that adding a small percent of another type of sugar, such as trehalose, to sucrose can extend the shelf life of the amorphous system by slowing crystallization. This study explores the hypothesis that raffinose increases the stability of an amorphous sucrose system. Cotton candy at 5 wt% raffinose and 95 wt% sucrose was made and stored at room temperature and three different relative humidities (%RH) 11%RH, 33%RH, and 43%RH. XRD patterns, and glass transition temperatures were obtained to determine the stability as a function of %RH. The data collected showed that raffinose slows sucrose crystallization in a low moisture amorphous state above the glass transition temperature and therefore improves the stability of amorphous sucrose systems.

Source
Trehalose Improves Stress Tolerance in Organisms E-mail

A bifunctional TPS-TPP enzyme from yeast confers tolerance to multiple and extreme abiotic-stress conditions in transgenic Arabidopsis

Miranda, José * ; Avonce, Nelson; Suárez, Ramón; Thevelein, Johan; Van Dijck, Patrick; Iturriaga, Gabriel

Improving stress tolerance is a major goal for agriculture. Trehalose is a key molecule involved in drought tolerance in anhydrobiotic organisms. Here we describe the construction of a chimeric translational fusion of yeast trehalose-6-phosphate synthase and trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase. This construct was overexpressed in yeast cells displaying both TPS and TPP enzyme activities and trehalose biosynthesis capacity. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the gene fusion was overexpressed using either the 35S promoter or the stress-regulated rd29A promoter. Transgene insertion in the genome was checked by PCR and transcript expression by RT-PCR. Several independent homozygous lines were selected in the presence of kanamycin and further analyzed.

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Trehalose Used in Cryopreservation of Human Fetal Skin for Transplantation E-mail

Cryopreservation of fetal skin is improved by extracellular trehalose

Gulsun Erdag, Ali Eroglu, Jeffrey R. Morgan and Mehmet Toner
Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgical Services, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Shriners Burns Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA

Abstract

In this study, we tested a non-permeating cryoprotectant, trehalose, in combination with dimethyl sulfoxide (Me2SO) in the cryopreservation of human fetal skin and compared it to Me2SO and glycerol, protocols that are routinely used by skin banks. The viability of fetal skin from four groups (fresh, and cryopreserved with glycerol, Me2SO, or trehalose/Me2SO) were evaluated using an in vitro membrane integrity assay and by transplantation to immunodeficient mice. The membrane integrity assay showed a 90% integrity in fresh, unfrozen fetal skin.

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Trehalose Proves Effective Kinetic Advantages E-mail

Characterization of a Bifunctional Enzyme Fusion of Trehalose-6-Phosphate Synthetase and Trehalose-6-Phosphate Phosphatase of Escherichia coli

Hak Soo Seo,1 Yeon Jong Koo,1 Jae Yun Lim,1 Jong Tae Song,1 Chung Ho Kim,2 Ju Kon Kim,3 Jong Seob Lee,4 and Yang Do Choi1

Graduate School of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Suwon 441-744,1 Department of Food and Nutrition, Seowon University, Cheongju 361-742,2 Department of Biological Science, MyongJi University, Yongin 449-728,3 and Graduate School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742,4 Korea

ABSTRACT

To test the effect of the physical proximity of two enzymes catalyzing sequential reactions, a bifunctional fusion enzyme, TPSP, was constructed by fusing the Escherichia coli genes for trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P) synthetase (TPS) and trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase (TPP). TPSP catalyzes the sequential reaction in which T6P is formed and then dephosphorylated, leading to the synthesis of trehalose.

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Trehalose Poster at International Conference on Molecular Systems Biology E-mail

Poster Title: 13C-NMR to monitor online the kinetics of intracellular metabolite pools in response to heat stress: input data for modeling the trehalose cycle in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

10th International Conference on Molecular Systems Biology
February 25-28, 2008, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City

Authors: L. Fonseca, C. Sanchez, J. Wu, H. Santos, and E.O. Voit
Presentor: Luis Fonseca (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)

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Trehalose puts life on hold E-mail

Authored by John Bonner, and published in Chemistry World, 28 July 2005
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2005/July/28070501.asp
Reproduced by permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Researchers are discovering how an apparently ordinary disaccharide helps plants and animals survive extraordinary environments.

Salvatore Magazù and colleagues at the University of Messina, Italy, have used a specialized spectroscopic technique to examine interactions between molecules of trehalose and water.

“The results could explain the unique biological properties of trehalose,” said the researchers, “which are not shared by other sugars with identical chemical formulae.”

Trehalose (C12H22O11) is a common component in the cells of many plant and animal roups. It protects desert species from damage during periods of drought and can romote survival in extreme heat and cold.

Several theories have been proposed as to why trehalose exerts far greater protective effects than other disaccharides like sucrose and maltose. These include suggestions that its special properties are due to a higher glass transition temperature or that it forms direct hydrogen bonds with lipids in cells, replacing similar bonds with water molecules.
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