For his efforts, biology professor Vincenzo De Luca, Canada Research Chair in plant biotechnology, and Brock University will receive about $500,000 from Genome Canada’s Bioproducts and Crops Competition to support the research De Luca will do on synthetic biosystems for the production of high value plant metabolites.
The $13.6 million project is led by Peter Facchini of the University of Calgary and Vincent Martin of Concordia University.
The project will identify genes from more than 75 plants that can catalyze the synthesis of various chemical compounds, which can be used to produce pharamceuticals, flavours, fragrances, pigments and insecticides.
The goal of the research team is to produce a catalogue of the functional components of the plants producing important natural products.
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