COMMON MILKWEED IS A PERENNIAL PLANT WITH A WIDE DISTRIBUTION IN THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN UNITED STATES. POTENTIAL USES OF MILKWEED INCLUDE THE HARVEST OF FIBER, HYPOALLERGENIC FLOSS, AND MEDICALLY RELEVANT METABOLITES. CARDENOLIDES, A CLASS OF COMPOUNDS THAT IS ABUNDANT IN MILKWEED, HAVE BEEN USED FOR CENTURIES TO TREAT HEART FAILURE, ARRHYTHMIAS, AND OTHER HUMAN DISEASES. CARDENOLIDE PRODUCTION FOR PHARMACEUTICAL APPLICATIONS AND CLINICAL RESEARCH HAS BEEN LIMITED BY THEIR UNKNOWN BIOSYNTHETIC PATHWAYS AND SOMETIMES LIMITED ABUNDANCE IN A COMPLEX MIXTURE OF PLANT METABOLITES. BASED ON PRELIMINARY RESULTS THAT INCLUDE A MILKWEED GENOME SEQUENCE, GENE EXPRESSION DATA, AND METABOLITE PROFILING DATA, FURTHER EXPERIMENTS WILL BE CONDUCTED TO IDENTIFY PATHWAYS FOR THE BIOSYNTHESIS OF CARDENOLIDES IN MILKWEED. TOGETHER, THESE EXPERIMENTS WILL PROVIDE NEW INSIGHT INTO AN IMPORTANT METABOLIC PATHWAY WHOSE ENZYMATIC STEPS HAVE NOT BEEN DETERMINED IN ANY PLANT SPECIES. PRIOR WORK HAS DEMONSTRATED THAT MILKWEED CAN BE GROWN IN CONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURAL ENVIRONMENTS, AND THEREFORE HAS POTENTIAL AN AGRICULTURAL CROP. BY ELUCIDATING BIOSYNTHETIC PATHWAYS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF PLANT-BASED CHEMICALS, IT WILL BE POSSIBLE TO USE SELECTIVE BREEDING TO IMPROVE THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF MILKWEED. RESOURCES DEVELOPED THROUGH THIS PROJECT WILL LEAD TO THE MORE TARGETED PRODUCTION OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPOUNDS IN MILKWEED AND CAN BE USED TO IMPROVE THE AGRONOMIC PROPERTIES THIS SPECIES AS A NEW PERENNIAL FIELD CROP FOR AMERICAN FARMERS.