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- August 9, 2006
BBMB's Reuben Peters has proven to be the right person at the right
time and place
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First it was the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a five-year,
$800,000 grant. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) quickly followed
suit with $230,000 over three years.
But the latest is the greatest for Reuben Peters, assistant professor
of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has awarded Peters and his research
team a $1.4 million, five-year grant this August.
"I think it was the right time, I was in the right place and I was
the right person for all these grant opportunities," Peters said. "I
keep inventing things for us to do. I guess it's my intellectual curiosity.
"I've always had more ideas than I have people to work on them."
That should change with the NIH grant.
"With the NIH grant that may change," he said. "We should have enough
people for all these ideas."
Peters' laboratory takes an interdisciplinary approach toward three interconnected
themes including identifying the biosynthetic enzymes involved in producing
terpenoid natural products of interest, understanding the diverse biochemical
mechanisms contributing to the production of these natural products, and
metabolic engineering to produce plant derived terpenoids.
Peters' plant of interest is rice and he is particularly interested in
how rice makes natural antibiotics to fight off Blast disease. Between
10-30% of the world's rice harvest is lost to this fungal disease.
"The genetic machinery required to make the natural antibiotics in
rice shares a common evolutionary origin with plant hormone biosynthesis,"
he said.
"We're curious to find out how this evolution happens and what the
implications are for other cereal crop plants. For example, it looks like
corn makes the same type of natural antibiotics."
Peters is also curious to see if a leap can be made from these rice antibiotics
to molecules that will exhibit antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer
activity in humans.
"There is an interrelationship between plant and human health,"
he said. "We need food and we need to maintain our own health. My
research group is in a position to see how these natural antibiotics impact
plant health and, conversely, to find out if what works in plants could
work in humans."
Peters' NSF grant is used to study how gibberellin plant hormones are
produced, while the USDA funding looks at how rice makes these gibberellin
related natural antibiotics.
With his NIH grant Peters will study how to make these types of plant
derived chemicals in large quantities, and look at related compounds that
are made by Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Almost 3 million people die each year worldwide from tuberculosis, mostly
in developing countries.
"One of our long-term goals is to see if can we use what we know
about plant enzymes to inhibit these tuberculosis enzymes," Peters
said.
Peters' research has also been noticed by the Phytochemical Society of
North America, which recently gave him its Young Investigator Award.
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