RESEARCH  Research in the Wurtzel laboratory is directed at solving a global health problem of vitamin A deficiency that affects 250,000,000 children worldwide and leads to increased childhood mortality. World wide Vitamin A deficiency is linked to diets deficient specifically in pro-vitamin A carotenoids.  To alleviate this public health problem, investigations incorporate tools of molecular biology, systems biology, bioinformatics, genetics, biotechnology, chemistry, and biochemistry, combined with comparative genomics. Current research in the Wurtzel laboratory incorporates such tools to investigate carotenoid accumulation in important food crops such as maize, wheat, and rice. The present goal is to understand, at the molecular and biochemical level, how plants regulate the biosynthesis and accumulation of provitamin A carotenoids in the seed endosperm tissue. This research, funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 22 years, is leading to improved strategies for predicting plant chemistry and enhancing provitamin A carotenoid content.

Ongoing projects: 1) Discovery of transcription factors that can be used for engineering the pathway; 2) Systems biology and use of bioinformatics to investigate regulation of plant biochemical networks; 3) Bioimaging, structural biology, and enzymology to investigate enzyme assembly and function in chloroplasts; 4) Discovery of new pathway enzymes using tools of Arabidopsis and maize genetics;  4) Development of new biotechnology platforms.

POSITIONS (link for application and other info)

Graduate Assistantship, Biology PhD Program

Graduate Assistantship, Biochemistry Ph.D. Program

PUBLICATIONS, SELECTED

RESEARCH GROUP This research is carried out by the cooperative efforts of graduate and undergraduate students and visiting postdoctoral scientists. Graduate students are enrolled in the CUNY doctoral programs in Biology (Plant Sciences; Molecular Biology) and Biochemistry and in the Lehman College Biology Masters program. Undergraduates are enrolled at Lehman College. The City University of New York (CUNY), situated in one of the world's pre-eminent cities, is the largest urban university in the United States and its third-largest public university system. Some 200,000 students are enrolled for degrees on 20 campuses in all five boroughs of New York City.

GRANT SUPPORT  This research has been funded by The National Institutes of Health since 1987; funding has also been obtained from The Rockefeller Foundation International Program in Rice Biotechnology, The Rockefeller Foundation Biotechnology Career Fellowship Program, PSC-CUNY, The American Cancer Society, and The McKnight Foundation Plant Biology Program. The Lehman College Molecular Biology Laboratory, where molecular and biochemical studies are carried out, has been funded by the National Science Foundation RIMI Program, Ciba-Geigy Corporation, CUNY Center for Applied Biotechnology and Biomedicine (CABB), and GRI (New York State Graduate Research Initiative Program). E. Wurtzel is also a member of the New York State Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) in Photonics Applications at CUNY and CUNY Institute of Macromolecular Assemblies.

SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES

Monitoring Editor: Plant Physiology

Associate Editor: Frontiers in Plant Physiology                         

Gordon Research Conferences-Selection and Scheduling Committee

          Founder and first Chair- Gordon Research Conference on Plant Metabolic Engineering 2005

Vice Chair, Gordon Research Conference on Carotenoids 2010; Chair (2013)

        

LINKS

• Gordon Research Conference on Plant Metabolic Engineering 2005  2007 2009 2011
• Gordon Research Conference on Carotenoids 2010
• ASPB Diversity Bank 
• ASPB Diversity Bank: A Powerful Tool for the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Plant Biologists ASPB News (July/Aug 2006) vol 33 no 4 by Elli Wurtzel and Tony DePass (local link)
• CUNY Plant Sciences PhD program
• useful plant biology links