A better understanding of the sorghum genome, for greater materials engineering possibilities

Kat Gilmore on June 15, 2026

A woman sits at a desk smiling; text announces Dr. Breeanna Urbanowicz receiving a $3 million DOE grant to study the sorghum genome at the University of Georgia New Materials Institute.

A $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will help scientists understand biochemical processes in a platform energy crop and “open the doors” to engineering possibilities for new materials. 

The research team in the University of Georgia New Materials Institute will develop a high-throughput platform to biochemically characterize glycosyltransferases (GTs) encoded in the sorghum genome involved in synthesis of the complex polysaccharides that comprise plant biomass. 

“Every plant cell is surrounded by a mechanically unique polysaccaride-rich cell wall,” explained Breeanna Urbanowicz, principal investigator on the project and co-author of the grant. “Most people don’t realize that the cotton in your t-shirt or jeans, or other plant fibers in textiles—even wooden furniture—are made from sugars that are linked together by glycosidic bonds. These resulting polysaccharides interact with one another and form different physiological and mechanical properties, which is why different forms of biomass is used as food, fiber, forage and building materials.” 

Scientists do not understand the biosynthetic pathways that lead to the formation of different complex carbohydrates, Urbanowicz said. “If we can put genes with function and understand the specific polymer structures that they form, this knowledge can open the doors to all sorts of different engineering possibilities.” 

Urbanowicz’s laboratory team at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center specializes in chemoinformatic syntheses and analyses. The researchers will employ robotics and artificial intelligence to characterize “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of enzymes.” 

“A lot of data will feed into AI and machine learning platforms so we can gather more data for predictability,” said Urbanowicz, an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. 

Co-PIs on the project include UGA CCRC researchers Kelley Moremen, a UGA Distinguished Research Professor in glycoconjugates,  Art Edison, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and professor of metabolomics and bioinformatics, and Pradeep Prabhakar, a senior research associate. This study is in partnership with the National Laboratory of the Rockies, specifically Yannick Bomble, Vivek Bharadwaj and Hunter Harrington. 

The project, “High-throughput biochemical, nuclear magnetic resonance, and computational predictive biology to decode glycosyltransferases of unknown function in Sorghum bicolor,” received $2.9 million in DOE funding earlier this year through grant number DE-SC0026057.