SWEETs for my sweet
| 24 November, 2010 | Richard P. Grant |
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Wolf Frommer is one of our Section Heads in Plant Biochemistry & Physiology. He is interested in sugar transport across the plant plasma membrane, and the sensors at the plasma membrane that regulate transporter activity and turnover. In this week’s Nature, a paper from Wolf’s group describes a new family of transporters, named SWEET, that export sugar from where it is produced1.
In the video below, Wolf describes how he began working on plant transport proteins, using yeast to identify transporters that load sucrose into the vasculature. The current work identifies transporters that are responsible for getting sugar, created by photosynthesis in the leaves, to the vascular tissue so that it can then be loaded into the phloem.
We had an undergraduate student from Germany visiting and gave her a high-risk project…
He discusses the FRET sensor they used to measure sugar uptake, and how they used it to identify the SWEET family, homologues of which are also found in animals. In plants, these transporters seem to be hijacked in economically important blight infections caused by Xanthomonas bacteria. The animal homologues may also be implicated in sensing and controlling blood glucose levels, with implications for diabetes.
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Wolf,
I read the abstract above and recalled my earlier correspondence with Larry Steinman regarding your studies on the tryptophan theft by cancer cells, and my inquiry as to the ability of another malaria drug, quinine, to “inhibit” tryptophan uptake.
Any connection?
Patrick