Characterizing Sugar Transporters with Biosensors and Cheminformatics (Lily Cheung, Georgia Tech)

Abstract:

SWEETs are membrane sugar transporters that play critical roles in plant physiology and crop yields. In this talk, I will describe our lab’s effort to design of a biosensor consisting of a plant SWEET and a conformation-sensitive fluorescent protein that translates sugar binding to the transporter into a fluorescence response. We named this biosensor SweetTrac1 and showed with a mass action kinetics model that changes in fluorescence intensity correspond to particular molecular events in the transport cycle. We also demonstrate how biosensors combined with cheminformatics analysis can be used to decipher the variety of molecules that a transporter can recognize and provide suggestions on how to use biosensors for protein engineering. Lastly, I will describe how that the spatial distribution of SWEETs protein in roots correspond to specific functional roles that regulated cell division and growth.

Biography:

Lily Cheung is an Assistant Professor in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech, working in the emerging field of Plant Systems and Synthetic Biology. Lily did her undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering at Rutgers University, her doctoral work also in Chemical Engineering at Princeton University, and her postdoctoral training on plant biology at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Lily is the recipient of an NSF NPGI Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Human Frontier Science Program Early Career Award.