Model plant: Centre Outreach Officer Yvonne van
der Ploeg and Professor Harvey Millar with
specimens of Arabidopsis.

Every minute of every day, plants around the globe convert 50,000 tonnes of sugar they’ve produced by photosynthesis into high-energy molecules to drive their growth.

Australian scientist Dr Joshua Heazlewood is one of the many researchers working to understand this massive energy conversion process.

Previously a research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at the University of Western Australia, Dr Heazlewood has recently taken up the position of Director of Systems Biology at California’s Joint Bio Energy Institute, an organisation dedicated to the development of more efficient plants for producing biofuels.

His focus remains, however, on the study of plant cell walls – the part of the plant that is burned to create biofuels.

“Plant cell walls are the stuff we can’t eat,” said Dr Heazlewood. “The objective of the whole Institute is to ultimately develop plant feedstocks that will break down more easily.”

Dr Heazlewood is concentrating on subcellular structures called Golgi and their role in the production of plant cell walls.

Meantime, a colleague and research collaborator of Dr Heazelwood, Professor Harvey Millar from Plant Energy Biology in Perth, is focusing on mitochondria - cellular organelles that produce vitamin C, folate and biotin.

The process of making vitamin C is closely linked to plant respiration.

“By defining the protein machinery responsible for respiration in plants and determining which parts of this machinery are damaged during environmental stress, we can develop rational strategies to make plant respiration more robust,” Professor Millar said.

The ‘model plant’ studied at the Centre is Arabidopsis – the first plant species for which the genome, or genetic code, has been fully sequenced.

The genetic code defines all the proteins, including the hundreds of proteins present in plant mitochondria.

By accurately measuring the mass of all the parts of each protein, scientists can figure out the sequence of all the proteins and understand how they all work together as a molecular machine.

“The study of plant energy biology can ultimately lead to the development of efficient, high-yield, nutritious and better-tasting crops that are more robust in changing climatic conditions,” Professor Millar said.