Uncovering missing enzymatic steps in biosynthesis of the plant biopolymer sporopollenin
Final Report Abstract
The goal of my project was to identify and characterize potential enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of the pollen-derived biopolymer sporopollenin. The candidate enzymes identified from the transcriptomic datasets were then investigated for their involvement in the sporopollenin biosynthesis pathway. Unfortunately, the candidate enzymes either did not show any related biochemical activity or were proven to be not involved in the sporopollenin biosynthesis based on their late expression and/or lack of pollen wall defects in the mutant. Thus, I ended up mostly with negative results. Nevertheless, I was able to show that some of these enzymes, notably At4g30470, are important for pollen development even through their biochemical function remains unclear. In addition to the proposed experiments, I investigated the composition of the Arabidopsis thaliana sporopollenin. The promising results provide evidence of conservation in sporopollenin composition across lineages and, most importantly, confirm presence of phenolic compounds in this polymer also in angiosperms.
