Research Highlights

In this study we characterized the impacts of biofuel cropping systems on soil microbial communities, finding that these communities were strikingly different depending on soil depth.

In this study, we further characterized a mutant gene (wri1-1) in the plant Arabidopsis that leads to strong reduction in seed oil content. We also identified a primary root defect and confirmed altered homeostasis in auxin, a growth regulator that plays an important role in plant development.

In this study, we identified flowering time gene candidates that could be employed to manipulate flowering time in upland, cold-tolerant switchgrass cultivars, with the goal of increasing total biomass yield for these northern accessions.

In this study, we tested Zip-lignin poplar vs. wild-type hybrid poplar to determine if Zip-lignin’s strategic lignin modifications, specifically engineered to reduce recalcitrance, enhance chemical pulping efficiencies. As predicted, Zip-lignin poplar demonstrated improved processing.

Assessing and predicting field-scale soil N2O (nitrous oxide) emissions remains imprecise because much of N2O production occurs within very small soil volumes called “hotspots.” In this study, we found that water absorption by plant residue creates unique conditions that can result in accelerated N2O emissions.

Recent discoveries indicate that lignification is a flexible mechanism and that plants are capable of using a variety of phenolic compounds for the formation of lignin polymers. In this study, we report the occurrence of a new class of polyphenolic compounds – hydroxystilbenes – the second such class arising from outside the monolignol biosynthetic pathway, in the lignins of palm fruit endocarps.

Stem length is a key trait for various sorghum genotypes, impacting biomass yield, plant architecture, and other important crop features. In this study, we identified the gene encoded by Dw2, a locus known to affect stem internode length; this gene encodes a protein kinase homologous to a member of the AGC protein kinase family in the plant Arabidopsis.

Cellulosic bioenergy offers environmental benefits not available from other biofuels, but requires substantial amounts of land and creates the potential for environmental harm. It is therefore important to understand how different bioenergy crop and management choices will simultaneously affect climate mitigation, biodiversity, reactive nitrogen loss, and water use in future biofuel landscapes.

To improve bioenergy crop composition and yield, we seek to understand activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR) and its impact on the ability of plant cells to accumulate easily digestible carbohydrates such as mixed-linkage glucan (MLG). Here we identify a Brachypodium UPR transcription factor, UPR genes responsive to chemical or heat stress, and impacts of heat stress on MLG accumulation.

To develop bioenergy crops that produce extra lipids for extraction as oil biofuel, we examined whether lipid transport complexes of plants with different lipid acyl composition have diverged in their function.