Robert L. Last
Professor

• B.A. 1980, Ohio Wesleyan University, Chemistry and Biology
• Ph.D. 1986, Carnegie-Mellon University, Biological Sciences
• NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, 1986-1989, Whitehead Institute at MIT, Plant Genetics
• Professor, 1989-1998, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Cornell University
• Director of Model Organism Functional Genomics, 1998-2002, Cereon Genomics LLC
• Program Director, 2002-2004, Plant Genome Research Program, National Science Foundation

lastr@msu.edu
301 Biochemistry Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1319
Office: 517-432-3278
Lab: 517-432-3277


Arabidopsis Chloroplast Genomics Project

Plant Genomics Project

Solanum Trichome Project

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Robert L. Last

Research Interests

Our group uses genetic, genomic and biochemical approaches to understand the regulation of biosynthetic pathways of importance to flowering plants and the animals that nutritionally depend on them. Plants synthesize an enormous number and variety of 'primary' and 'secondary' metabolites. Many have documented or proposed roles in homeostasis (hormones, for example), interaction with other organisms (pathogens, symbionts, and herbivores), and defense against harmful non-biological stress agents (cold, drought, light, oxidizing chemicals, etc). In addition, plants are primary sources of nutrients essential to humans and other animals (for examples: vitamins, essential amino acids, and minerals), pharmaceuticals, and phytochemicals with proposed health-promoting value (antioxidants, phytosterols, glucosinolates, etc). Recent quantum leaps in structural and functional genomics coupled with analytical chemistry have created unprecedented opportunities to dramatically increase our understanding of how plants synthesize these diverse and important compounds.

While genetics continues to play an important role in increasing our understanding of plant biochemistry, the one pathway at a time approaches taken in the past are not well suited for functional genomics approaches, which aim to describe the roles and interactions of all gene products. In recent years my research has increasingly relied on genomics approaches to study biochemical pathways. One example is our work to industrialize Arabidopsis mutant screening and map based cloning. While contributing tremendously to our understanding of plant biology, forward genetics mutant analysis had been suited to small scale approaches. MORE

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