Phytochemicals (in collaboration with Professor John Caruso):

Carnosic acid and the related oxidized compounds are produced from acetate via the terpenoid pathway. This is a multistep, multienzyme pathway with many benchmark intermediates. Those intermediate compounds become the precursors for a variety of natural products. Some of the end products that result become accumulated in specific tissues, often increasing in amount with increased age of the tissues as well. It has been suggested that plant tissue culture techniques could be useful to produce natural products from plants that are rare, slow growing or difficult to cultivate. In many cases, tissue culture has the potential to provide greater ease of genetic manipulations to increase the yield of desired products. However, generally what is not known is whether cultured tissues will retain and express all the enzymes of the pathways necessary to produce the desired product, and, if they do, whether the product will accumulate in sufficient amounts in rapidly growing and dividing cells to allow for identification and/or extraction of quantities of the product.

Research approach:

1. Develop good quick analytical techniques that can screen many samples for the presence of carnosic acid (and perhaps precursors and derivatives).
2. Culture tissues from plants on various media to optimize growth of callus, or roots, or shoots, or whole plants. Analyze these various tissues for presence and quantities of carnosic acid and related compounds.
3. Manipulate genetics and/or growth conditions to maximize the production of carnosic acid.
4. Generalize the studies to several other plants and natural products.