Carpita

Education/Academic Qualifications

Degrees:

B. Sc., Biological Sciences, Purdue University, 1968-1972

Ph. D., Plant Physiology, Colorado State University, 1973-1977

Academic Appointments:

2021-present: Professor Emeritus, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Purdue University

1989-2020: Professor, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Purdue University

1998: Guest Professor, Instituto de Botânica, São Paulo, SP, Brasil

1994: Guest Professor, Institut für Pflanzenbiologie, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

1983-1989: Associate Professor, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

1986-1987: Visiting Professor, Institut für Pflanzenbiologie, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

1979-1983: Assistant Professor, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

1977-1979: Post-doctoral Fellow, MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Memberships:

American Association for the Advancement of Science

American Society of Plant Biologists

American Chemical Society

Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS)

Appointments, Awards, and Honors:

Dept. Botany & Plant Pathology, Outstanding Teacher Award, 2013

Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2012

Elected Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists, 2009

Agricultural Research Award, Purdue University, 1991

President-elect, President, and Immediate Past President of ASPB (2009-2012)

Member of Program Committee of ASPB (2005-2009)

Elected Secretary and Chair of the Program Committee of ASPB (2005-2007)

Elected Member of the Executive Committee of the American Society for Plant Biologists (ASPB), (2002-2005)

Organizer of the 253^rd American Chemical Society symposium “Structure and Biosynthesis of Cellulose”, San Francisco (2017).

Co-organizer and Executive Committee for five Pan-American Congresses on Plants and Bioenergy (2008-2016)

Elected Vice-chair, Gordon Conferences on “Plant Cell Walls 2003”, and designated Chair for “Plant Cell Walls 2006”

Member of the International Advisory Board for the Plant Cell Wall Meetings (2003-2004)

Guest Associate Editor, Special issue on ‘Plants and Bioenergy’, Journal of Experimental Botany (2014-2015)

Editorial Board, Biofuels (2012-2015)

Guest Associate Editor, Special issue on the ‘Plant Cell Wall’, Plant Molecular Biology (2000-2001)

Editorial Board, Planta (1996-2000)

Editorial Board, Methods in Cell Science (1994-2003)

Monitoring Editor, Plant Physiology (1998-2001)

Editorial Board, Plant Physiology (1987-1992)

Research Interests:

Nick Carpita’s research goals are to understand the diversity of plant cell wall polysaccharide structures and their functions, to create a complete inventory of the genes responsible for the biogenesis of the wall, and to understand how cell wall biogenesis is regulated. Current work involves identifying the protein machinery involved in assembly of cellulose synthase proteins into complexes. Nick employs genetic, biochemical and cellular approaches to establish gene function in synthesis of hemicelluloses at the Golgi membrane, and the trafficking of cellulose synthases and non-cellulosic polysaccharides from Golgi to plasma membrane. At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), his work centers genetic modification of poplar and sorghum biomass composition and architecture to improve comminution of these feedstocks for more efficient conversion to biofuels and bioproducts. Current focus is on defining the polysaccharide and aromatic molecules that function in the fiber cell-cell adhesion – a major factor in recalcitrance to deconstruction of biomass for production of biofuels and bioproducts. Recent findings point to the pectin, rhamnogalacturonan-I, as a universal component of adhesion among all angiosperms. Nick also teams with NREL scientists and engineers who are mining the marine microbiome for enzymes that deconstruct cell walls and matrix polysaccharides of red and brown algae. Nick has also formed a consulting company Sugar Solutions LLC (https://www.sugarsolutionsllc.com/) that provides biomass analytical services.

Selected Publications:

Carpita, N.C., McCann, M.C. (2024) The compound middle lamella as a target for improved deconstruction of woody biomass. In: The Plant Cell Wall – a Historical Perspective, Geitmann, A., ed. Taylor & Francis Group, CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL. eBook ISBN 9781003178309

Olek, A.T., Rushton, P.S., Kihara, D., Ciesielski, P., Aryal, U.K., Zhang, Z., Stauffacher, C.V., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2023) Essential amino acids in the Plant-Conserved and Class-Specific Regions of cellulose synthases. Plant Physiol. 191: 142-160. https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiac479

Hill, M.J., Penning, B.W., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2022) COMPILE: A GWAS computational pipeline for gene discovery in complex genomes. BMC Plant Biol. 22: 315 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-022-03668-9

Sowinski, E.E., Westman, B.M., Redmond, C., Kong, J., Olek, A.T., Olek, J., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2022) Lack of xyloglucan in the cell walls of the Arabidopsis xxt1/xxt2 mutant results in specific increases in homogalacturonan and glucomannan. Plant J., 110: 212-227. https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.15666

Yang, H., Benatti, M.R., Karve, R.A., Fox, A., Meilan, R., Carpita, N.C., McCann, M.C. (2020) Rhamnogalacturonan I is a determinant of cell-cell adhesion in poplar wood. Plant Biotechnol. 18:1027-1040. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.13271

Shiga, T.M., Yang, H., Penning, B.W., Olek, A.T., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2021) A TEMPO-catalyzed oxidation-reduction method to probe surface and anhydrous crystalline-core domains of cellulose microfibril bundles. Cellulose 28: 5305-5319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-021-03815-9

Carpita, N.C., McCann, M.C. (2020) Redesigning plant cell walls for the biomass-based bioeconomy. J. Biol. Chem. 295:15144–15157. https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.REV120.014561

Gençer, E., Burniske, G.R., Doering III, O.C., Tyner, W.E., Agrawal, R., Delgass, W.N., Ejeta, G., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2020) Sustainable production of ammonia fertilizers from biomass. BioFPR 14: 725-733. https://doi.org/10.1002/bbb.2101

Okekeogbu, I.O., Aryal, U.K., Penning, B.W., Heazlewood, J.L., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2019) Differential distributions of trafficking and signaling proteins of the maize ER-Golgi Apparatus. Plant Signal. Behav. 14:1672513. https://doi.org/10.1080/15592324.2019.1672513

Penning, B.W., Shiga, T.M., Klimek, J.F., SanMiguel, P.J., Shreve, J., Thimmapuram, J., Sykes, R.W., Davis, M.F., Carpita, N.C., McCann, M.C. (2019) Expression profiles of cell-wall related genes vary broadly between two common maize inbreds during stem development. BMC Genomics 20:785. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-019-6117-z

Penning, B.W., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2019) Evolution of cell wall gene families in grasses. Front. Plant Sci. 10:1205. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.01205

Yang, H., Zhang, X., Luo, H., Liu, B., Shiga, T.M., Li, X., Kim, J.I., Rubinelli, P., Overton, J.C., *Subramanyam, V., Abu-Omar, M., Chapple, C., Donohoe, B.S., Cooper, B.R., Mo, H., Makowski, L., Mosier, N.S., McCann, M.C., Meilan, R., Carpita, N.C. (2019) Overcoming cellulose recalcitrance in woody biomass for the lignin-first biorefinery. Biotechnol. Biofuels 12:171. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13068-019-1503-y

Okekeogbu, I.O., Pattathil, S., Fernández-Niño, S.M.G., Penning, B.W., Lao, J., Heazlewood, J.L., Hahn, M.G., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2019) Glycome and proteomic components of Golgi membranes are common between two angiosperms with distinct cell wall structures. Plant Cell 31:1094-1112. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.18.00755

Shiga, T.M., Xiao, W., Yang, H., Zhang, X., Olek, A.T., Donohoe, B.S., Makowski, L., Hou, T., Zhang, Y., Zhao, T., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C., Mosier, N.S. (2017) Enhanced rates of enzymatic saccharification and catalytic synthesis of biofuel substrates in gelatinized cellulose generated by trifluoroacetic acid. Biotechnol. Biofuels 10:310. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13068-017-0999-2

Rushton, P.S., Olek, A.T., Makowski, L., Badger, J., Steussy, C.N., Carpita, N.C., Stauffacher, C.V. (2017) Rice Cellulose Synthase8 Plant-Conserved Region is a coiled-coil located at the catalytic core entrance. Plant Physiol. 173:482-494. https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.16.00739

Dugard, C.K., Mertz, R.A., Rayon, C., Mercadante, D., Hart, C., Benatti, M.R., Olek, A.T., SanMiguel, P.J., Cooper, B.R., Reiter, W-D., McCann, M.C., Carpita, N.C. (2016) The cell wall arabinose-deficient Arabidopsis thaliana mutant murus5 encodes a defective allele of Reversibly Glycosylated Polypeptide2. Plant Physiol. 171:1905-1920. https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.15.01922

Yang, H., Wei, H., Ma, G., Antunes, M.S., Vogt, S., Cox, J., Zhang, X., Liu, X., Bu, L., Gleber, S.C., Carpita, N.C., Makowski, L., Himmel, M.E., Tucker, M.P., McCann, M.C., Murphy, A.S., Peer, W.A. (2016) Cell wall targeted in planta iron accumulation enhances biomass conversion and seed iron concentration in Arabidopsis and rice. Plant Biotechnol. J. 14:1998-2009. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pbi.12557