Our new study in Nature Plants maps how "multi-tasking" enzymes in plants transfer nitrogen, a key step toward improving crop N use efficiency. 🌱 Big thanks to our collaborators from Max Planck, Hokkaido Univ, & MSU, and for support from @NSF and @DOE. Learn more: rdcu.be/eFOFN #PlantMetabolism

Mapping multi-substrate specificity of Arabidopsis aminotransferases

Nature Plants - Systematic characterization of Arabidopsis aminotransferase family enzymes uncovered many previously unrecognized activities and revealed their multi-substrate specificity, aspects...

rdcu.be

Save the date! The 65th Phytochemical Society of North America (PSNA) meeting is coming to Madison, WI, from June 15-19, 2026. Join us at the Memorial Union for exciting science, supportive community, and Wisconsin's finest! More info at psna-online.org #PSNA2026 #Phytochemistry #PlantScience

Thanks for being part of the #AppsPlantSci Plant Metabolic Diversity special issue, @rwmartin.bsky.social et al! fyi: the special issue has published! Check out the full issue here: bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21680450... #botany #PlantMetabolism #Phytochemistry

SPECIAL ISSUE: Advances in analyzing and engineering plant metabolic diversity: Applications in Plant Sciences: Vol 13, No 4

Click on the title to browse this issue

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Rachel W. Martin@rwmartin.bsky.social · last yr.

Do you need a tool that helps you annotate protein sequences and makes nice figures? CASA is here for you. It can help find key features in new proteins and make publishable sequence alignments with custom features.

Big news! We are recruiting a postdoc to work on tomatillo evolution: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta.... The clade containing tomatillos and its allies (ca 300 spp) has evolved lantern fruits at least 25 times - we want to know why! Join us @rociodeanna.bsky.social & @caschenck-bio.bsky.social

We identified a novel location for acylsugars, on the fruit surface, widely distributed across the Physalis genus. Paves the way for understanding the cell types and regulation responsible to fruit-surface localized acylsugars in collab with @iochromaland.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Novel production of structurally diverse and sticky defense metabolites on wild tomatillo fruits

Plants have evolved a structurally diverse chemical repertoire to mediate various environmental interactions. Yet, little is known about the chemical complexity and metabolic pathways across many plan...

biorxiv.org

From the upcoming #AppsPlantSci special issue: Advances in analyzing & engineering plant metabolic diversity A new spin on chemotaxonomy: Using non-proteogenic amino acids as a test case By Makenzie Gibson, @caschenck-bio.bsky.social, et al. bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #botany

We identified a metabolic complex involved in tomato specialized metabolism, regulating trichome acylsugar biosynthesis. Add this to a growing list of pathways that operate as protein-protein complexes of sequential enzymatic steps www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

NSF workers who didn't get fired this morning are sending angry emails to NSF management. Here's one of them:

Plants produce tremendous chemistry to outcompete neighbors for space and resources. We identify the mechanism of action of the plant-produced proline mimic azetidine 2-carboxylic acid, which gets misincorporated during protein synthesis and leads to death of surrounding organisms.