Chemistry Faculty:
Peter Albersheim, Ph.D.
Professor
Phone: 706-542-4404
E-mail: albersch@ccrc.uga.edu
Biographical Information
Ph.D., 1959, California Institute of Technology
Postdoctoral positions:
California Institute of Technology, 1959
NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, 1959-60
Research Interests
The primary goal of my research is to determine the structures and functions of biologically interesting oligo- and polysaccharides. Professor Alan Darvill and I co-direct our combined research teams, one of 11 research groups of the CCRC. Our group has concentrated on two lines of inquiry: structurally characterizing plant primary cell wall carbohydrates, and studying their regulatory functions including the ability of oligosaccharides to control the rate of growth, tissue differentiation, and defense against stress or disease. Oligosaccharins, complex carbohydrates that function as regulatory molecules, have exquisitely specific structural requirements and are released from the cell wall by enzymes.
Our laboratory investigates the biological activities of oligosaccharins using biochemical, recombinant genetic, and tissue culture techniques to assay oligosaccharins. We also develop new methods to structurally characterize oligo- and polysaccharides, including mass spectrometric and NMR spectroscopic techniques, artificial neural network technology, and generation of monoclonal antibodies to localize specific carbohydrate epitopes in the plant cell wall. Carbohydrates of biological interest often have particularly complicated branched structures that are difficult to isolate as homogeneous substances, challenging us to develop new methods to purify and structurally characterize them. We are also working to:
- increase the size of carbohydrate that can be structurally characterized and decrease the amount of sample required for structural analysis;
- improve the ability to fractionate carbohydrates and increase the yield of larger oligosaccharide fragments obtained from them;
- improve our ability to detect and purify enzymes that cleave complex carbohydrates; and
- provide spectral analysis of polysaccharides on the Internet using neural network-based search engines and spectral databases.
Since complex carbohydrates are involved in most cell activities, understanding their structures and functions is essential to many fields of basic research and industry, including biotechnology. Researchers in our group span the gap traditionally separating the chemical and biological disciplines, facilitating the interdisciplinary, synergistic approach that we believe results in more rapid advances towards our research goals.
Publications
P. Albersheim, A. Darvill, K. Roberts, L.A. Staehelin, and J.E. Varner. "The Structures of Cell Wall Polysaccharides Define Their Mode of Synthesis," Plant Physiol., 1997, 113, 1.
E. Zablackis, W.S. York, M. Pauly, W.-D. Reiter, C.C.S. Chapple, C.R. Somerville, A. Darvill, and P. Albersheim. "Substitution of l-Fucose by l-Galactose in Cell Walls of Arabidopsis mur1," Science, 1996, 272, 1808.
M.A. O'Neill, D. Warrenfeltz, K. Kates, P. Pellerin, T. Doco, A.G. Darvill, and P. Albersheim. "Structure of Plant Cell Walls XLIII. Rhamnogalacturonan-II, a Pectic Polysaccharide in the Walls of Growing Plants, Forms a Dimer That is Covalently Cross-linked by a Borate Diester. In vitro Conditions for the Formation and Hydrolysis of the Dimer," J. Biol. Chem., 1996, 271, 22923.