MSc Defence: Daniel Vik

Name of MSc candidate

Daniel Vik

Title of thesis

Investigations of the putative glucosinolate metabolon

Abstract

It is becoming evident that metabolic pathways are organized in supra-molecular complexes, termed “metabolons”, which are composed of the sequential biosynthetic enzymes. It has been proposed that the glucosinolate biosynthetic pathway of the model organism, Arabidopsis thailiana, is organized in a metabolon complex. In addition to the previously used yeast-2-hybrid and bi-molecular fluorescence complementation assays, pulldown experiments were used to provide orthogonal evidence for the interaction, as the other methods are both prone to generate false positive. Bioinformatic approaches were used to investigate the nature of the candidate interactions. The findings suggest the existence of a dynamic glucosinolate metabolon, where several glucosinolate enzymes could interact upon substrate binding. However, further experiments are needed to reach full certainty of our findings.

Censor

Erik Andreasson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp

Supervisor

Barbara Halkier