Chris R. Somerville

Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy and EBI Director
PhD  Genetics    University of Alberta, 1978
B.Sc.   Genetics    University of Alberta, 1974

Melvin Calvin Laboratory
Berkeley, California 94720
crs@berkeley.edu
office: 510-643-6265   lab: 510-642-1487   fax:  510-642-4995

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The research program in my lab is largely directed toward understanding how plant cell wall polysaccharides are synthesized, how the structures relate to the functions of the cell wall, and how the system is regulated. I envision that knowledge of cell wall structure and function will facilitate the development of plants with improved utility as sources of renewable materials and as biofuel feedstocks.

A major focus of work in the lab is in understanding how cellulose is made. We have developed plants in which cellulose synthase is modified in various ways that facilitate functional studies. One type of modification is the addition of yellow fluorescent protein to subunits of the complex. This allows imaging of the complexes in live cells. We have used this capability to show that an interaction between cellulose synthase and cortical microtubules controls the orientation of cellulose deposition. We are engaged in understanding what regulates the amount of cellulose and the properties of cellulose microfibrils (eg., length and diameter). We have also developed plants that express cellulose synthases with other modifications that will facilitate structural studies of isolated complexes.

A second line of work in the lab concerns the identification of the genes for enzymes that catalyze synthesis of the major polysaccharides. We have identified a number of mutants with altered polysaccharide composition. In order to facilitate the analysis of such mutants we have been developing new tools for polysaccharide analysis. One class of new tools, developed by postdoc Stefan Bauer in collaboration with Prasanna Vasu (Oklahoma State University), Staffan Persson, and Andrew J. Mort (Oklahoma State University) is the development of a suite of cloned polysaccharide cleaving enzymes that are expressed as secreted HIS-tagged enzymes in Pichia pastoris. These enzymes allow enzymatic fingerprinting of polysaccharides by methods such as capillary electrophoresis and MALDI.

Persson, S., Wei, H., Milne, J., Page, G.P., Somerville, C.R. (2005) Large-scale coexpression analysis reveals novel genes involved in cellulose biosynthesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102,8633-8638

Bauer, S., Vasu, P., Mort, A.J., Somerville, C.R. (2005) Cloning, expression and characterization of an oligoxyloglucan reducing end-specific xyloglucanobiohydrolase from Aspergillus nidulans. Carb. Res.,340,2590-2597.

Somerville, C.R. (2006) Cellulose synthesis in higher plants. Annu. Rev. Cell Dev. Biol. 22,53-78

Paredez, A., Somerville, C.R., Ehrhardt, D. (2006) Dynamic Visualization of Cellulose Synthase Demonstrates Functional Association with Cortical Microtubules. Science 312,1491-1495

Bauer, S., Vasu, P., Persson, S., Mort, A.J. and Somerville, C.R. (2006) Development and application of a suite of polysaccharide degrading enzymes for analyzing plant cell walls. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103,11417-11472.

Estevez, J., and Somerville, C.R. (2006) FlAsH-based live-cell fluorescent imaging of synthetic peptides expressed in Arabidopsis and tobacco. Biotechniques, 41,569-574

Wei, H., Persson, S., Mehta, T., Srinivasasainagendra, V., Chen, L., Page, G.P., Somerville, C., Loraine, A. (2006) Transcriptional coordination of the metabolic network in Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant Physiol., 142, 762-774

Estévez, J.M., Kieliszewski, M.J., Khitrov, N., Somerville, C. (2006) Characterization of synthetic hydroxyproline-rich proteoglycans with AGP- and extensin-motifs in Arabidopsis. Plant Physiol., 142,458-470

Persson, S., Hosmer-Caffall, K., Freshour, G., Hilley, M.T., Bauer, S., Poindexter, P., Hahn, M.G., Mohnen, D., Somerville, C.R. (2007) The Arabidopsis irregular xylem 8 mutant is deficient in glucuronoxylan and homogalacturonan which are essential for secondary cell wall integrity. Plant Cell, 19: 237-255

DeBolt, S., Gutierrez, R., Ehrhardt, D.W., Melo, C.V., Ross, L., Somerville, C.R, Bonetta, D. (2007) Morlin, an inhibitor of cortical microtubule dynamics and cellulose synthase movement. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104,5854-5859

Somerville, C.R (2007) Biofuels. Current Biology 17 (4), R115-119

Bannigan, A., Scheible, W.R., Lukowitz, W., Eagerstron, C., Wadsworth, P., Somerville, C.R. and Baskin, T. (2007) A conserved role for kinesin-5 in plant mitosis. J. Cell Sci. , 120,2819-2827

Vorwerk, S., Schiff, C., Santamaria, M., Koh, S., Nishimura, M., Vogel, J., Somerville, C., Somerville, S. (2007) EDR2 negatively regulates salicylic acid-based defenses and cell death during powdery mildew infections of Arabidopsis thaliana. BMC Plant Biology 7,35

DeBolt, S., Gutierrez, R., Ehrhardt, D.W. and Somerville, C. (2007) Non-motile CESA rosettes repeatedly accumulate within localized sub-resolution regions at the plasma membrane in Arabidopsis hypocotyl cells following 2,6-dichlorobenzonitrile (DCB) treatment. Plant Physiol., 145,334-338.

Persson, S., Paredez, A., Carroll, A., Palsdottir, H., Doblin, M., Poindexter, P., Khitrov, N., Auer, M., Somerville, C.R. (2007) Genetic evidence for three unique components in primary cell wall cellulose synthase complexes in Arabidopsis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104,15566-15571

Youngs, H.L., Hamann, T., Osborne, E. and Somerville, C.R. (2007) The Cellulose Synthase Superfamily. In, M. Brown and I. Saxena, eds, Molecular and Structural Biology of Cellulose, Springer, pp 35-49

Silady, R.A., Ehrhardt, D.W., Jackson, K., Faulkner, C., Oparka,K. and Somerville, C.R. (2008) The GRV2/RME-8 protein of Arabidopsis functions in the late endocytic pathway and is required for vacuolar membrane flow. Plant J., 53, 29-41

Paredez, A., Persson, S., Ehrhardt, D.W., and Somerville, C.R. (2008) Cellulose Synthase Activity is Required for Normal Cortical Microtubule Organization: Genetic Evidence for Cell Wall to Cytoskeleton Feedback. Plant Physiol., 147, 1723-1734

Mohnen, D., Bar-Peled, M., and Somerville, C. (2008) Cell wall synthesis. In M. Himmel, ed., Biomass Recalcitrance, Blackwell, pp 94-159

Gu, Y., Deng, Z., Paredez, A., DeBolt, S., Wang, Z.Y., Somerville, C.R. (2008) Prefoldin6 is required for proper microtubule dynamics and organization in Arabidopsis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105:18064-18069

Hamann, T., Wuttke, R.,Nunes-Nesi, A., Stephens, N.R., Spalding, E.P., Fernie, A.R., Somerville, C.R. (2008) Characterization of the cell wall stress response in Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant J., in press

Carroll, A., Somerville, C.R. (2009) Cellulosic biofuels. Annu. Rev. Plant Biol. 160, 165-82