Excited to see our work from @lichmanlab.bsky.social and @geufloreslab.bsky.social, and that from Chang et al., featured in a recent Nature Plants News & Views! Thanks @natplants.nature.com and Tsubasa Shoji! #natprod #PlantScience www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nature Plants@natplants.nature.com · 2mo ago

New News & Views: "A sweet solution to nicotine biosynthesis" rdcu.be/fl6qg ... unexpected role for glycosylation and a highly coordinated biosynthetic system that reshapes our understanding of plant specialized metabolism. #PlantScience

Pleased to share our full publication of our manuscript describing completion of nicotine biosynthesis in @natcomms.nature.com following our pre-print from December last year. In this work we solve the 200-year-old puzzle of how tobacco plants make nicotine. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nicotine biosynthesis is completed by cryptic activating glucosylation - Nature Communications

Despite the significance of nicotine, a neuroactive alkaloid produced by tobacco, its biosynthesis has remained elusive. Here, the authors report the in vitro and in planta reconstruction of a fo...

nature.com

Today on Stop Food Waste Day please consider these top tips for fighting food waste!

A two year post-doc in synthetic chemistry is available - working on plant alkaloids and terpenoids. The post is based with @unsworthchem.bsky.social as part of a close collaborations with my group and Prof Grogan in YSBL. Apply NOW, the deadline is the 9th April! jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/rese...

Congratulations @frankelab.bsky.social ! Well deserved!

Natural Product Reports@natprodreports.rsc.org · 5mo ago

🎉We are delighted to announce that the 2026 Natural Product Reports Emerging Investigator Lectureship has been awarded to Jakob Franke (@unihannover.bsky.social) Please join us in congratulating him! #chemsky #natprod #secmet Read more about Jakob and his research🔽 blogs.rsc.org/np/2026/03/1...

Oral abstract submission is now open for Directing Biosynthesis VIII, an event that has been connecting #Biosynthesis researchers for over a decade. Network and discuss the latest research, get all the details and submit: rsc.li/dbviii #DBVIII #ChemSky

Plant discovery could lead to new ways of producing #medicines 'Now that we know how to look for this chemical production, we have new avenues to explore for the production and discovery of safe drugs,' said co-author Benjamin Lichman. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve... @lichmanlab.bsky.social

Plant discovery could lead to new ways of producing medicines

Scientists have shown how plants produce powerful natural chemicals that could help in the production of new medicines in more environmentally friendly ways.

york.ac.uk

So pleased to share this work on alkaloid biosynthesis. Great collaboration with @unsworthchem.bsky.social. Well done to all authors. We have found key alkaloid producing enzymes that look like those normally found in bacteria. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Plant discovery could lead to new ways of producing medicines

Scientists have shown how plants produce powerful natural chemicals that could help in the production of new medicines in more environmentally friendly ways.

york.ac.uk

New Phytologist@newphyt.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Parallel evolution of plant alkaloid biosynthesis from bacterial-like decarboxylases Wood et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/HYPKAP...

New paper out today on alkaloid (bio)synthesis with @unsworthchem.bsky.social . Dr Lachlan Waddell made ten bioactive securinine alkaloids using "biomimetic" total synthesis - a strategy that we think is analogous to the plant makes the alkaloids by biosynthesis. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

The centuries old mystery of how tobacco plants make nicotine has a sweet solution: an additional glucose group is vital for the key pathway steps. Read more in our pre-print: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... Incredible work from @benschwabe.bsky.social and collaborators in York and Copenhagen.

Nicotine biosynthesis completed by cryptic activating glucosylation

Nicotine is a neuroactive alkaloid produced by tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) as a defense against herbivory, and an addictive stimulant that has been used by humans for millennia. Despite its significan...

biorxiv.org

Hello! We are currently hiring for two post-doc positions on projects related to plant natural products, enzymes, and developing new systems to make useful small molecules. More details on our website: lichmanlab.weebly.com/post-docs.html

Post-Docs

We are currently recruiting for two post-doc positions in the Lichman lab that require similar skills and experience. We aim to do a joint recruitment process with a single interview. If you apply...

lichmanlab.weebly.com

🎉 Congrats to C-SPIRIT members Tomasz Czechowski, Benjamin Lichman, & Ian Graham (UYork) on their new paper "Evolution of linear triterpenoid biosynthesis within the Euphorbia genus"! 🧬 📖 Read: doi.org/10.1038/s414... #plantscience

Busy and rewarding June in the Lichman Lab! lichmanlab.weebly.com/news.html. Highlights from the team include Danielle's RSci qualification, Ben's poster award at GRC, Green impact platinum award, visit from BBSRC, and new paper with contributions from Sandesh. Well done everyone! 🥳

News

Brilliant new paper out in Nature Communications led by Dr Tomasz Czechowski and Prof Ian Graham. Sandesh and Benjy made some modest but valuable contributions to this nice story on unusual linear...

lichmanlab.weebly.com

Started as a very successful master thesis, now published in JACS. Screening sequence similarity networks turned out to be a great way to discover oxidosqualene cyclases with unusual activity from more than thousand plant transcriptome sequence datasets. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Expansion of the Stereochemical Space of Triterpenes by Mining Noncanonical Oxidosqualene Cyclases Across the Diversity of Green Plants

Triterpenoids and steroids are structurally complex polycyclic natural products with potent biological functions, for example, as hormones. In all eukaryotes, the carbon skeletons of these compounds a...

pubs.acs.org

Please share! A 4-year position to work on genome duplication and evolution in Bath, part of our BBSRC sLOLA project determining the extent and effects of rediploidisation across eukaryotes! www.bath.ac.uk/jobs/Vacancy...

A Mint Monoterpenoid Manuscript for Monday! academic.oup.com/hr/advance-a... Congratulation to Dr Cobus Smit and visiting PhD student Jingjie Dang for their contributions.

Haplotype-resolved genome of Agastache rugosa (Huo Xiang) provides insight into monoterpenoid biosynthesis and gene cluster evolution

Abstract. Monoterpenoids are small volatile molecules produced by many plants that have applications in consumer products and healthcare. Plants from the m

academic.oup.com

Looking for a #LifeSciences #postdoc opportunity? Check out EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowships for internationally mobile scientists in Europe and around the world. Apply before 14 February (next cut-off date): embo.org/funding/fell... #ResearchFunding 🧪

Fellowships, grants and career support – Postdoctoral Fellowships – EMBO

Supporting internationally mobile postdoctoral researchers in Europe and around the world

embo.org

Really happy to have the chance to contribute to this paper by @dashagolubova.bsky.social, Melissa salmon and @honghaosu.bsky.social. We couldn’t have got it done without @nicolabiologist.bsky.social and Maria O’Connell guiding us. It’s been a super fun collaboration!

bioRxiv Plant Bio@biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · 2y ago

Biosynthesis and Bioactivity of Anti-Inflammatory Triterpenoids in Calendula officinalis (pot marigold) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.11.632544v1

It's a gloomy day, and nothing brightens it quite like poisons and their toxic tales. So today, I bring to you TUTIN, the poison with a funny name linked to Captain Cook, circus elephants, and bees. And just like my in-person talks, I never quite know what I'm going to say, so buckle up!

We’re looking for 3 postdocs to join our lab and work on engineering plant gene expression, metabolism and growth. If you have enthusiasm & skills in synthetic biology or metabolic engineering, apply by Jan 31. www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49767/ www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49773/ www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49769/

The quest for fungal-resistant crops, identifying novel plant-based medicines & sustainable ways to produce them, and being Black in Plant Sciences. Nicola Patron, head of the Plant Molecular Engineering group & co-founder of Black in Plant Science, talks about her work: tinyurl.com/2jerbru9

Congratulations to @omarkamileen.bsky.social , an off-site PhD student based at the @oconnorlab.bsky.social in ICE-MPI Jena, came to York to complete his viva. He passed with flying colours, examined by Profs Neil Bruce and Rob Field. Well done Omar! Now to Germany for more celebrations!

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.

Second post - major congratulations to Barbara Radzikowska for passing her viva.👩‍🎓 Thank you to examiners Dr Lianne Willems and Prof Chris Willis. Cosupervised by @unsworthchem.bsky.social . Seriously impressive project on complex alkaloid biosynthesis in Daphniphyllum. 🥳

Hello! First post - an introduction - we are a lab working on the discovery, understanding and engineering of plant natural product biosynthesis. We like alkaloids AND terpenoids. Our website is lichmanlab.weebly.com. Looking forward to many more interactions on this site

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Discovery, understanding and engineering of ​plant natural product biosynthesis.

lichmanlab.weebly.com