(Ottawa) –
Ashkan Golshani, a biology professor at Carleton University, is looking at turning food into medicine.
Golshani is one of 10 recipients of this year’s Carleton Research Achievement Awards. The recipients were honoured this week as part of Carleton’s Research Days celebration.
His research proposes to create foods that have increased beneficial compounds so they could replace certain pharmaceuticals and medicines.
He explains that the human stomach contains a variety of bacterial populations, many of which are beneficial to human health. There have been some efforts to develop drugs and supplements that will help increase the population of these helpful bacteria in the human stomach.
Golshani’s latest research project investigates how two complex sugars, raffinose and stachyose, affect bacteria in the stomach and on cells. To that end, he will breed soybean plants that have an increased concentration of these two sugars. He will then create soy milk and tofu from these plants and test them to see how they affect the growth of bacteria in the stomach.
“We expect that the consumption of food made from these varieties could replace the need for certain supplementary tablets.”
Two years ago, Golshani and researchers from computer science (Frank Dehne), systems engineering (James Green) and biology (Michel Dumontier) published the first complete set of interaction predictions between proteins within a cell in any organism. These interactions are what make a cell “tick.”
“To realize the biology of a cell, we have to first uncover all the interactions that its components make with each other – how they talk to each other and how they respond to each other,” says Golshani. “We designed a very efficient computational tool which can predict interactions with a much higher degree of accuracy than any other technique developed so far. This research leads to a better realization of how a unit of life functions. It also advances our understanding of the detailed mechanisms and processes within a cell, which adds to our collective knowledge of how different diseases may develop in higher organisms.”
The research team is currently working on a much anticipated human protein interaction network. This work should be finalized by the end of 2010. It is expected to lead to thousands of testable hypotheses in the area of human cell biology.
Golshani and colleague Myron Smith have also been investigating purified natural compounds, like wildflower Echinacea and the diluted venom of the Cuban blue scorpion, to see whether they contain substances that could be used to treat medical problems such as cancer or yeast infections.
Research Days at Carleton is a month-long celebration of the outstanding and world-changing work by our innovative researchers. Carleton is staging public lectures, conferences, films and project demonstrations to give the public an opportunity to experience the breadth and depth of our research. Discoveries at Carleton are making a significant contribution to our country and the world. With more than 850 research projects underway, $84 million in research funding, 24 Canada research chairs and myriad public- and private-sector partnerships, Carleton is making its mark in fields as diverse as digital media, health, the environment and sustainability, and globalization.
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For more information:
Dr. Ashkan Golshani
Associate Professor, Biology
Carleton University
ashcan_golshani@carleton.ca
613-520-2600, ext. 1006
Lin Moody
Media Relations
Carleton University
613-520-2600, ext. 8705