Location: Plant, Soil and Nutrition Research
Project Number: 8062-21000-049-009-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 14, 2026
End Date: Aug 13, 2027
Objective:
This agreement aims to develop and apply advanced in vitro assays to quantify transporter activity and link these properties to cellular and whole-plant phenotypes. Deliverables include validated functional platforms, quantitative transport models, and identification of favorable transporter alleles and markers to support crop improvement for fruit quality and acid soil adaptation.
Approach:
Functional Analysis of Membrane Transporters: Electrophysiological platforms will be advanced to characterize transporter activity using integrated heterologous expression systems (e.g., Xenopus oocytes, mammalian cells) alongside emerging cell-free expression approaches. Transport activity will be quantified using two-electrode voltage clamp and patch-clamp platforms, including artificial lipid bilayers, to define substrate specificity and transport mechanisms and enable comparative analyses of natural allelic variants. These efforts will support functional characterization of transporters involved in organic acid fluxes and metal transport, linking molecular activity to traits such as fruit acidity and acid soil tolerance. Expected deliverables include validated functional platforms, quantitative transport parameters and mechanistic models, and identified transporter targets and functional markers to enable crop improvement.