Dr. Heather Youngs
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Oregon Health and Science University 2003

Research Areas:
Plant biochemistry and molecular biology, enzymology and kinetics, structure/function studies, oxidative stress, bioremediation, biomass utilization

Courses:
BL1800 Biochemistry Orientation
BL4010 Biochemistry I
BL4420 Bioethics
BL4820 Biochemistry Laboratory Techniques
BL5070 Enzymology

Research Description:
My lab is interested in the structure and function of the extracellular matrices of multicellular organisms. This complex amalgam of carbohydrates, glycoproteins, proteoglycans and proteins is unique in the various tissues of plants, animals, and fungi. One focus of the lab is in developing new tools for extracellular matrix (ECM) research. The other is applying these tools to discern the relationships between structure and function in various ECMs.

One application of my work is the full utilization of lignocellulosic
biomass. We are attacking this problem from both ends (synthesis and degradation) by concentration on the four major groups of proteins that we can use to alter higher plant ECM architecture. These can be divided into two groups that control:

1) carbohydrate structure
      -glycosyl synthetases (synthesis)
      -glycosyl hydrolases (degradation)
2) lignin structure
      -type II extracellular peroxidases (synthesis)
      -type III extracellular peroxidases(degradation).

For more information on our projects visit our lab webpage:

http://www.bio.mtu.edu/~hlyoungs/web-content/home.html

Recent Publications:

Youngs, H. L., Hamann, T., Osborne, E., Somerville, C. (2005) The cellulose synthase superfamily. Cellulose book chapter (in press).

Munirathinam Sundaramoorthy, Heather L. Youngs, Michael H. Gold and Thomas L.Poulos. (2005) High Resolution Crystal Structure of Manganese Peroxidase: Substrate and Inhibitor Complexes. Biochemistry 44:6463-6470.

Chris Somerville, Stefan Bauer, Ginger Brininstool, Michelle Facette, Thorsten Hamann, Jennifer Milne, Erin Osborne, Alex Paredez, Staffan Persson, Ted Raab, Sonja Vorwerk and Heather Youngs (2004) Toward a systems approach to understanding plant cell walls. Science 306: 2206-2211.

Hamann, T., Osborne, E., Youngs, H. L., Mission, J., Zimmerli, L., Somerville, C. (2004) Global expression of CESA and CSL genes in Arabidopsis. Cellulose 11:279-286.

Assaad, F. F., Qui, J. L., Youngs, H., Ehrhardt, D., Zimmerli, L., Kalde, M., Peck, S., Wanner, G., Ramonell, K., Somerville, C., Somerville, S., Thordal-Christensen, H. (2004) The PEN1 syntaxin defines a novel compartment upon fungal attack and is required for the timely assembly of papilla. Molecular Biology of the Cell 15: 5118-5129.

Youngs, H. L., Sollewijn Gelpke, M. D., Li, D., Sundaramoorthy, M., Gold, M. H. (2001) The role of E39 in MnII binding and oxidation by manganese peroxidase from Phanerochaete chrysosporium. Biochemistry 40: 2243-2250.