Computational Investigations of SWEETs to Genetically Enhance Sugar Transport in Plants

Diwakar Shukla, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Diwakar Shukla, Alexander Moffett, Zahra Shamsi, Balaji Selvam, Chuankai Zhao, Shriyaa Mittal, Jiangyan Feng, Kevin Cheng, Jiming Chen, Matthew Chan

Sugar efflux transporters are essential for the maintenance of animal blood glucose levels, plant nectar production, and plant seed and pollen development. Despite broad biological importance, the mechanistic understanding of sugar efflux transporters has remained elusive. In this study, we propose to investigate a new class of sugar transporters, named SWEETs (Sugar Will Eventually be Exported Transporters). In particular, we aim to address the following questions in this study: Aim 1: How SWEETs transport sugar and how does it compare with their bacterial counterpart SemiSWEETs? The transport mechanism of SemiSWEET is known to undergo a "free-ride" mechanism and we want to determine if SWEETs also exhibit the same phenomenon as they are genetically related proteins. Aim 2: How does the phosphorylation of SWEETs modify their functional behavior from a biophysical perspective? Phosphorylation is common post-translational modification that changes protein function. We are interested in understanding how it modulates protein dynamics and the sugar transport. Aim 3: Can water transport inside SWEETs be enhanced this without affecting sugar translocation? Our preliminary results from simulations of SWEET transporter in rice (OsSWEET2b) reveals that SWEETs aid water translocation across cell membranes, indicating for the first time that plants also utilize sugar transporters to translocate water and could play a potential role in managing drought stress. To fully understand these biological questions, we require extensive computational resources to gain enough data to make statically significant conclusions. Therefore, access to Blue Waters' petascale machinery is necessary to successfully implement this project.