The inability of many plants to store carbon-rich hydrocarbons, as well as difficulties in breaking down cell walls in plants, present barriers to using biomass for bioenergy production. Increasing hydrocarbons in plants and strategies to more easily degrade cell walls are long-term goals of the GLBRC for improving plant biomass. The following researchers are working in this area:

Ken Keegstra

GLBRC Scientific DirectorProfessor of Plant Biology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University

Focus Area: Improved Plant BiomassKeegstra is a renowned plant biologist and an expert in plant cell wall biochemistry. He has extensive management and scientific experience, having served for 14 years as director of the DOE-funded Plant Research Laboratory at MSU and as faculty member in the Botany Department at UW-Madison for 15 years. As a result, he knows many GLBRC participants from both campuses.

Richard Amasino

Professor of Biochemistry, UW-Madison

Focus Area: Improved Plant BiomassAmasino’s research focuses on understanding the genetic controls of plant flowering and how flowering is altered in response to environmental variables such as changes in day length or temperature. He also serves as education and outreach coordinator for the GLBRC, capitalizing on his excellence and innovation in teaching science to students. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, Amasino has won numerous national awards for his innovative uses of genetics in the classroom and his involvement of undergraduate students in original research.

Christoph Benning

Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University

Focus Area: Improving Plant Biomass
The Benning lab focuses on the assembly and trafficking of glycerolipids, and the regulation of glycerolipid metabolism in photosynthetic organisms. The goal of this research is to understand the assembly of plastid membrane lipids and of triacylglycerols, which are typical seed storage lipids. Knowledge about lipid metabolisms and its regulation will enable us to design novel biofuel plants that produce oils in different non-seed tissues. These high yielding oil crops will address current yield limitations and will serve as novel feed stocks for the production of biodiesel or jet fuels.

Federica Brandizzi

Associate Professor at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory,
Michigan State University

Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Brandizzi isinterested in the cell biology of the plant secretory pathway. A main objective of her research is to understand how proteins traffic between secretory organelles using live cell imaging. The experience of ther lab will be instrumental to follow the dynamics of post-Golgi secretion of cell wall materials.

Natalia de Leon

Assistant Professor of Agronomy, UW-Madison

Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
The biomass quality properties of maize required for silage fed to ruminants have been found to be parallel to the desired traits to be selected for maize to be used as a feedstock for energy bioconversion. Dr. de Leon’s research focuses on the breeding and genetic analysis of maize for silage and biomass production; she will contribute to the evaluation and analysis of phenotypic and genotypic variation for biomass related traits.

Kyung-Hwan Han

Associate Professor of Forestry and Genetics,Michigan State University

Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Han’s research takes an integrated functional genomics approach to understanding the genetic controls of wood formation and secondary wall biosynthesis. The goal of his research is to identify and characterize transcriptional regulators that control secondary wall biosynthesis and vascular cambium activity in woody plants. The outcomes of his research will help us to optimize lignocellulosic feedstocks for improved biofuel productivity and processing.

Heidi Kaeppler

Associate Professor of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin

Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Kaeppler is an expert in cereal crop genetics and monocot genetic engineering. Her research group will collaborate in the genetic study and enhancement of the major monocot biofuels feedstocks, corn and switchgrass, through utilization of genetic engineering to overexpress and suppress genes affecting biofuel yield and biomass production in those crops.

Shawn Kaeppler

Professor of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin

Focus Area: Improving Biomass for Biofuels
Kaeppler is an expert in maize genetics. The goal of his research is to characterize the molecular basis of endogenous alleles conditioning biomass accumulation and composition. Results from this research will allow us to more efficiently develop maize cultivars to be used in biofuel production. Furthermore, maize is an excellent model research system for other potential biomass crops including switchgrass and Miscanthus, and research from maize will be applicable to developing improved cultivars in these species as well.

John Ohlrogge

Professor of Plant Biology, Michigan State University

Focus Area: Improved Plant BiomassOhlrogge is an expert in plant oils, which are the most energy-rich biomass available from plants. While oils have twice the energy content of carbohydrates and need little energy to extract and convert the oil to fuels, the challenge is yield. Ohlrogge’s lab has made advances in understanding the how plants create oils. The goal: oilseed plants suitable for large-scale biofuel production.

Markus Pauly

Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University

Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Pauly is an expert on plant cell wall polysaccharide analysis, in particular the hemicelluloses. The goal of his research is understanding the regulation of wall polysaccharide biosynthesis on a molecular level. Such knowledge will help us to tailor lignocellulosic materials derived from bioenergy crops with improved biomass degradability and high sugar yields. In addition, Pauly is involved in a team to establish highthroughput analytical platforms to assess plant biomass.

John Sedbrook

Associate Professor of Genetics, Illinois State University

Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Sedbrook is an expert in the area of plant cell expansion and development, with a particular emphasis on the involvement of the plant cytoskeleton. That expertise is being applied toward unraveling key mechanisms of tissue differentiation and secondary cell wall formation in dicots and grasses. The Sedbrook lab is also employing the new model grass Brachypodium distachyon in identifying genes affecting biomass digestibility, with the goal of generating bioenergy crop grasses with improved biomass traits.

Thomas D. Sharkey

Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,
Michigan State University

Focus Area: Improving Plant Biomass
Sharkey is an expert on photosynthetic carbon metabolism and starch metabolism in leaves. The goal of his research is developing ways to increase the starch, an easily degraded polymer, stored in plants for use as biofuels. Knowledge from recent basic research into starch structure will be used to engineer plants in the hope of making a better biofuels source. A second component of the research is controlling carbon export from leaves to optimize yield of desirable products without compromising overall yield. Carbon export from leaves will be manipulated to try to break the connection between carbon storage in leaves and reduced yield.

View an alphabetical list of GLBRC project leaders here