Abstract
The author outlines the major milestones in his 40-year career in plant research. His research program might be described, broadly, as explorations into the physiology and biochemistry of plants and their cells using physiological, biochemical, genetic, molecular biological and chemical techniques and technologies. The main areas encompassed by the program are the pathways of biosynthesis of branched-chain amino acids, pantothenate, folates and one-carbon units, uptake of organic and inorganic sources of nitrogen by plant cells, and somatic hybridization and genetic transformation of plant protoplasts. Many of these investigations were carried out with the aid of auxotrophic and resistance genetic variants selected either from cultures of Datura innoxia cells or from among mutagenized populations of Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings. Some technologies found to be especially useful were plant cell and tissue culture, detection of 14C-labelled isotopes in metabolic intermediates, isolation, purification and characterization of enzymes, and most recently, 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.Key words: Arabidopsis, Datura, biochemical genetic variants, tissue culture, nitrogen metabolism.
Publisher
Canadian Science Publishing