Arkansas P3

Symposium 2014

Arkansas P3 Symposium
Welcome Letter
Dear Colleagues:

Arkansas Center for Plant Powered Production (P3) would like to welcome you to its Seventh
(wow, hard to believe) Annual P3 Research Symposium. It is great to bring the group back to the
Winthrop Rockefeller Institute and Petit Jean Mountain. This is a spectacular venue for great science and for sharing new techniques and discoveries, finding collaborators, and interfacing with
creative colleagues. Our group is pushing 120 participants that range from first-time summer
interns to established (even famous) scientists and everything in between. For the first time, the
P3 students have selected and are hosting an invited speaker, Dr. Wayne Curtis from Pennsylvania
State University. We have some great talks planned. We will learn about our new EPSCoR Track II
Project, led by two P3 faculty. And we have scheduled two evenings for our poster session -- always
our best opportunity to talk science and network.

I would like to especially thank members of our P3Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), Drs. Brenda Winkel (Virginia Tech), John Howard (Applied Biotech Institute in California), Mike Tumbleson
(University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), and David Gang (Washington State University) for their
participation and tremendous support of P3. Everyone needs to give Lacy Nelson (UAF) a great big
shout out. Lacy has done an exceptional job of coordinating this conference and really came to
P3s rescue to make it happen. Lacy and I also want to thank Shea Harris, Shelbi Raysor and Molly
Alexander for helping to prepare everything for the symposium and keep things running smoothly. I would also like to recognize the incredible contributions of Emily Devereux, P3s wonderful
program coordinator for the last six years. We are very proud that Emily, as of July 1, is Arkansas
State Universitys new Associate Director of Research Development and Research Administration
Liaison! Hopefully all of you will have the chance to introduce yourself to Molly Alexander who has
just started as P3s new program manager.
So, with that said, I thank you all for coming and wish you a wonderfully productive and enjoyable
meeting. Please enjoy the stimulating science, the great food and comradery, and the breathtaking
views of Petit Jean Mountain and its surrounding nature.

Carole Cramer, Ph.D.,

Director, Arkansas Center for Plant-Powered Production

Arkansas Plant Powered Production

Social Media Pages and Contacts
Dont forget that P3s social media and website is a great
way to keep your web presence current! Remember to
send updates and revisions to P3 Program Manager,
Molly Alexander. Email: mmalexander@astate.edu

Looking for updates on P3?

LIKE us on Facebook!

www.facebook.com/ArkansasP3Center

Want to have your work seen?

Follow us on twitter!
www.twitter.com/ARP3Center

Want the world to know your name?

Send your updates to be published on:
www.plantpoweredproduction.com

Arkansas Plant Powered Production

Technical Advisory Committee

2013-2014

Dr. Brenda S.J. Winkel

(P3 TAC, Chair 2013-2014)
Professor and Head
Department of Biological Sciences
2125 Derring Hall (MC 0406)
Virginia Tech University
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email: winkel@vt.edu
Dr. C Robin Buell
Department of Plant Biology
Michigan State University
Plant Biology Laboratories
612 Wilson Road, RM 166
East Lansing MI 48824
Email: buell@msu.edu

Dr. David R. Gang

Associate Scientist
College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences
Institute of Biological Chemistry
Washington State University
PO Box 646340
Pullman, WA 99164-6340
Email: gangd@wsu.edu
Dr. John Howard Founder
President of Applied Biotech Institute
Cal Poly Technology Park
Building 83-1D
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Email: jhoward@appliedbiotech.org

Arkansas P3 Symposium Agenda

July 28-30 2014
Monday, July 28
12:00p
1:30p

2:00p





2:30p

Registration & Room Check-In (outside Show Barn Hall)

Welcome, Introductions (Show Barn Hall)

Carole L. Cramer, P3 Director
Marta M. Loyd, Executive Director of WRI

Keynote speakers (Show Barn Hall)

Brenda Winkel, Virginia Tech (P3 TAC)
Title: The flavonoid enzyme interactome: potential novel connections
between flavonoids and the defense response

Wayne Curtis, Penn State University (Student invited speaker)

Title: Biomass: Cradle to Grave

(3:00-3:30 Break)

Session I (Metabolomics)

Moderators: Carole Cramer and Steve Grace (Show Barn Hall)
3:30p

Session keynote
David Gang, Washington State University (P3 TAC), Application of omics
tools to investigate regulation of plant metabolism

4:00p

Session Talks
Fabricio Medina-Bolivar (ASU), Unraveling the biosynthesis of prenylated
stilbenoids in peanut

4:40p

Siddique Aboobucker (ASU), Characterization of an Arabidopsis L-gulono-1,4-

lactone oxidase involved in vitamin C biosynthesis

4:20p

Jordyn Radke (UALR), Linking genes and metabolites to shed light on

phenylpropanoid metabolism in tomato

5:30p
Dinner (Conference Dining) Management Team and TAC to have dinner in the
conference room
7:00p - 8:00p Poster Session I (Governors Room)

Arkansas P3 Symposium Agenda

July 28-30 2014
Tuesday, July 29
7:30a

Breakfast (Conference Dining)

Session II (Bioenergy and bioengineering) (Show Barn Hall)

Moderators: Julie Carrier and Beth Hood
8:00a
Session Keynote

Mike Tumbleson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Status and updates on
cellulosic processing
8:30a

8:50a

Session Talks
Elizabeth Hood (ASU), Biomass processing enzymes and potential co-products

Kala Rajan (UA), A step towards understanding the inhibitory effect of rice straw
hydrolyzates on commercial cellulases

9:10a
Angele Djioleu (UA), Extraction of natural products prior to saccharification could

prove beneficial for a biochemical refinery platform

(9:30-9:45 Break)
Session III (Phenomics) (Rock Theater)

Moderators: Argelia Lorence and Fiona Goggin
9:45a

Introductory Session Talk

Argelia Lorence (ASU) and Fiona Goggin (UA) The Arkansas and Missouri
Bioimaging Consortium for Plant Stress Biology

10:35a

Yuan-Chuan Tai (Washington University in St. Louis), (video lecture) -Radiotracer

imaging technologies for plant research

10:15a
Session Talks
Susan Lever (University of Missouri) (video lecture) -Radiochemistry capacity at MU

in support of the EPSCoR Track 2 award
10:55a
David Braun (University of Missouri) (video lecture) - Radiochemical imaging

approaches to study phloem transport in maize

Arkansas P3 Symposium Agenda

July 28-30 2014
Tuesday, July 29
11:35p

Lunch (Conference Dining)

Session IV (Bioinformatics) (Show Barn Hall)

Moderator: Andy Pereira
12:35p

Introductory Session Talk

Rick McMullen (UA), Capabilities for computational genomics and computational
biology in Arkansas

1:05p

Session Talks
Karl Walker (UAPB), Protein side-chain prediction with dynamic dependence

1:45p

2:05p

Vibha Srivastava (UA), Towards assessing the transcriptomic changes associated

with plant transformation

I. Next Gen Sequencing Analysis (workshop/discussion of NGS project data analysis)

Faculty (Show Barn Hall)

3:05p

Recreation

1:25p
Xueyan Wang (UA), Global gene expression during incompatible andcompatible
host-pathogen interactions

6:00p
7:00p

Concurrent Sessions

II. Student Session: Invited Speaker and professional development (Harris/Curtis)

Join us on a hike to Cave Rock!

Dinner (Conference Dining)

Poster Session II (Governors Room)

Arkansas P3 Symposium Agenda

July 28-30 2014
Wednesday, July 30
7:30a
Breakfast (Conference Dining)

8:30a
Student Professional development session II (Rock Theater)
9:30a

10:00a

Conclusion of meeting (Show Barn Hall)

Carole L. Cramer, P3 Director

Strategic Planning Meeting (Show Barn Hall)

P3 Management Team & P3 TAC

Keynote Speaker
Monday, July 28

The Flavonoid Enzyme Interactome:

Potential Novel Connections Between
Flavonoids and the Defense Response
Brenda S.J. Winkel is a Professor of Biological Sciences at
Virginia Tech, where she has served on the faculty since
1992 and as Department Head since 2010. Dr. Winkel
earned a B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Biochemistry from
Southern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in Genetics from the
University of Georgia, followed by three years of postdoctoral
training with Howard Goodman at Harvard Medical School.

The primary focus of her research group over the past 20 years
has been to understand the physical organization of metabolic
pathways in the complex and crowded environment of the
cell, with a focus on flavonoid metabolism in Arabidopsis. The
Winkel group is currently collaborating with the laboratories
of Rich Helm at Virginia Tech and of Gloria Muday and Jacque
Fetrow at Wake Forest on an NSF Arabidopsis 2010 project.
This effort involves generating transcriptome, proteome, and
metabolome data for Arabidopsis roots that are then used
to develop mathematical framework models of the auxin
and ethylene response. Dr. Winkel also has a long-standing
collaboration with Karen Brewers laboratory in the Department
of Chemistry to develop new multimetallic anti-cancer agents,
the results of which were recognized with a Popular Mechanics
Breakthrough Award in 2010. All of these projects have been
supported primarily by the National Science Foundation.

Over the past 15 years, Dr. Winkel has been heavily involved
in training students, with 47 undergraduates, 21 graduate
students, and 10 postdoctoral fellows having worked in her
group. She was the founding director of the Molecular Plant
Sciences graduate program at Virginia Tech and co-PI on
an IGERT graduate program entitled, Exploring Interfaces
in Graduate Education and Research, aimed at promoting
interdisciplinary research across engineering and the sciences.

BRENDA S.J. WINKEL, Ph.D.

Keynote Speaker
Monday, July 28

Biomass: Cradle to Grave

A Full Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Pennsylvania
State University for over 25 years and an affiliate professor
of Penn States Plant Science and Bioengineering Programs,
Dr. Curtis has supervised over 350 undergraduate students
as well as 20 graduate students and 4 postdocs. Not only
ingrained with the depth of knowledge inherent with
decades of academic research, Dr. Curtis also boasts a
breadth of knowledge with projects that focus on bioprocess
systems yet ranging from plant propagation to membrane
protein expression and to algae and lignocellulosic biofuels.
Ironically, Dr. Curtis started off as a Biochemistry major as
an undergraduate at Penn State in order to avoid graduate
school. Eventually, the lure of academia--pursuit of knowledge,
autonomy, creativity, innovation, etc.--captured his interest
and he graduated with honors (and highest G.P.A. in fact)
and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Penn State in 1984.
Then after a summer stint with Dupont, he pursued his Ph.D.
at Purdue University, matriculating in 1988. Thereafter, he
returned to his Central Pennsylvania and Nittany Lion roots.

Within his tenure since, he has overseen industrial projects in

the fermentation pilot plant including conducting industrial
bioprocessing workshops, taught over one thousand
undergraduates
aspects
of
biochemical/biomolecular
engineering, and served as a consultant to dozens of companies
including Monsanto, DOW Agrosciences, Boyd & Blair
Vodka, and Mobil. His 2006/7 sabbatical also allowed him to
collaborate with an algae startup fuels company, GreenFuel
Technologies, as well as George Churchs laboratory at Harvard.
Leveraging his expertise and Penn States entrepreneurship
program, he is the Co-founder and President of Calyx Bioprocess
Technology, a startup aimed at scaling up and optimizing
algae growth using a novel trickle bed photobioreactor.

WAYNE CURTIS, Ph.D.

Lastly, he is a proud father of four with

two of his sons carrying on the legacy with
honors Chemical Engineering degrees of
their own from Penn State; Brandon (B.S.
Chemical Engineering; B.S. Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology, 11) is now pursuing
his Ph.D. at UC-Berkeley and Matthew (B.S.
Chemical Engineering; B.S. Molecular and
Cell Biology, 13) is a first year grad student
at CalTech. Meanwhile, a rising junior,
In Curtis Laboratory, he propagates a mentality of work hard, Erik works in the lab and his youngest,
play hard that is both intense and rewarding. Modeling his own Jenny, will enroll at Penn State this fall.
credo, Dr. Curtis intensity in the lab directly translates to his
personal life wherein he spends as much of his time as he can with
his family and/or in the wilderness. Despite his amateur status,
he is a gifted plant taxonomist and rather exceptional guitarist.

Keynote Speaker
Monday, July 28

Application of Omics Tools to

Investigate Regulation of Plant
Metabolism

David R. Gang is a member of the Institute of Biological Chemistry at

Washington State University, where he is also the Co-Director of the Murdock
Metabolomics Lab and the Director of the Tissue Imaging and Proteomics
Laboratory. He has supervised 18 post-doctoral researchers, a dozen graduate
students, and over two dozen undergraduate students in his lab. He recently
joined the startup company Botanisol LLC as the Chief Science Officer, which
is developing new anti-inflammatory agents identified in medicinal plants. Dr.
Gang earned his B.S. and B.A. degrees in Botany/Plant Molecular Biology and
in Germany Literature at Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. at WSU. He
did post-doctoral work at the University of Michigan. His first faculty position
was in the Department of Plant Sciences and the BIO5 Institute at The
University of Arizona. He has been in the IBC at WSU since 2009. He has earned
several awards, including the Benson Presidential Scholarship at BYU; the
Loyal H. Davis Graduate Student Fellowship at WSU; the Sokol Post-Doctoral
Fellowship in the Sciences from the Rackham Graduate School, UM; the Arthur
Neish Young Investigator Award, PSNA; and the Young Investigator Award in
Plant Genome Research from the United States National Science Foundation.
Dr. Gangs research is instrumentation- and technology-intensive and
involves an interdisciplinary approach, with a distinct post-genomics
emphasis. A major ongoing focus of the research in his lab seeks to elucidate
the biosynthetic pathways that produce novel and important specialized or
secondary metabolites in plants, to uncover the mechanisms responsible
for the evolution of these pathways in the plant kingdom, to understand
the function of a given natural product/metabolite in the biology and
physiology of a given plant species, and to develop the tools needed to
analyze metabolites and their functions in complex biological systems. He is
also very interested in identifying mechanisms responsible for controlling
the development of plant cells and tissues that have evolved to produce high
levels of such metabolites, such as glandular trichomes and storage rhizomes .

His research often focuses on the intersection between basic plant biology and
its application to agriculture, human health, and bioenergy, leading to several
major research areas in his lab. The first area involves the identification of
the means by which medicinal compounds are produced in plants and other
organisms and how these processes could be utilized to produce specialty
chemicals either in crop-based or fermentation based systems. The second
involves efforts to understand how metabolism is regulated, leading to
partitioning of energy and carbon to different biosynthetic pathways in plants,
with potential applications related to production of specialty fuel additives or
development of new plant and algal strains for bioenergy production. The third involves
understanding how invasive plant species are able to out-compete other organisms,
with applications related to control of major weedy species around the world.

DAVID GANG, Ph.D.

A fourth area of research includes efforts to develop the means to control the spread of serious
plant diseases, such as citrus greening diseases,
transmitted by psyllids. The final area of research
in his lab includes efforts to identify new target
molecules for drug application, from a wide variety
of organisms. The most productive approach in these
areas is now a multidisciplinary approachwhich
utilizes the best tools from the fields of chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, genomics, proteomics
and metabolomics.
Dr. Gangs favorite contributions to the work in his
lab include field trips to exotic locations to collect
biological samples for analysis back in the lab. That
includes collection of ginger family tissues from the
rain forests of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and microbes
from marine sediments around the world. Dr. Gang
is a very proud father three sons and three daughters.
The oldest son, Jorgen, is at BYU studying archeology,
twins Garret and Torsten are on LDS Church missions, while daughters Cambria, Brynna and Ellowyn
are all still school aged

Keynote Speaker
Tuesday, July 29

Status and Updates on

Cellulosic Processing
MIKE TUMBLESON, Ph.D.

Dr. Tumbleson has coauthored more than 250 refereed journal papers and
600 scientific abstracts and presentations. He organized and chaired the
Swine in Biomedical Research international conference held in 1985 and
was the editor and compiler of a three volume treatise on Swine in Biomedical
Research. He organized and cochaired an International Symposium on
Advances in Swine in Biomedical Research held in 1995 and was coeditor
of a two volume treatise on Advances in Swine in Biomedical Research.

He was the overall chairperson of the Corn Derived Ethanol: Removing

Technological Constraints meeting in 1991 at Peoria, IL. He organized
the 1992 conference on Animal Biotechnology: Technology Transfer
and Industrial Needs held at the National Live Stock and Meat
Board headquarters in Chicago, IL. He chaired the poster session
for the Biobased Products Expo 92 at St. Louis, MO, and the Ethanol
Production session at the Ethanol Blended Fuels 1993 conference.

In 1992, 1994 and 1996, he chaired the poster sessions at the National
Corn Growers Corn Utilization Conferences IV, V and VI at St. Louis,
MO. For the 1998, 2000 and 2002 Corn Utilization and Technology
Conferences, cosponsored by CRA and NCGA, he cochaired the
meetings and coedited the proceedings. For the 2004 and 2006
Corn Utilization and Technology Conferences, he chaired the poster
session and edited the proceedings. He chaired the session on Niche
Products at the Animal Coproducts 94 conference at Kansas City, MO.
For the 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013
International Starch Technology Conferences I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and
VIII, he cochaired the meetings and coedited the proceedings. For the
2010 Conversion Technologies for Biofuels Symposium, he coedited
the proceedings. In 2010, he cochaired the Near Term Opportunities
for Biorefineries Symposium. For the 2012 Science and Engineering
for a Biobased Industry Symposium, he coedited the proceedings.

Arkansas Plant Powered Production

Meeting Notes