EPSCoR CENTER for PLANT-POWERED PRODUCTION (P3)
Arkansas ASSET Initiative, 2007-2010

Project PI: Carole L. Cramer
(Arkansas State University)

Campus Co-PIs: Kenneth Korth
(University of Arkansas, Fayetteville)

Steve Grace
(University of Arkansas, Little Rock)

The EPSCoR P3 Center

• A new direction for Arkansas that builds on the state’s strength in agriculture and the food industry, and recent investments in research at the interface of agriculture, the environment, and medicine
• Enhancing research infrastructure, resources & cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional collaboration
• Linking research competitiveness with outreach and entrepreneurship to ensure knowledge-based economic development

Why pursue plant-made specialty products?

• New medicines addressing complexity, scale, safety, cost and chiral specificity
• New sources for enzymes, biofuels, health-promoting phytochemicals, and other industrial compounds
• New Ag-derived products to meet diverse markets

P3 Center strengths

• Extensive experience in plant-based enzyme and “plant-made pharmaceutical” production
• Key model systems for metabolic engineering and bioproduction
• Expertise in regulatory pathways and defense signaling
• Analytics for protein purification and characterization
• Analytics for metabolic profiling and phytochemical identification
• Bioinformatics for genomics, proteomics and metabolomics
• IP and tech transfer experience
• A strong commitment to cross-disciplinary collaborative research, discovery and application