Discovery and engineering of plant metabolic pathways for plant and human health

Humans have become extraordinarily reliant on plants and plant-derived molecules for food, medicine, and energy. However, remarkably little is known about how plants perform the chemistry responsible for making these molecules. New plant genome sequences and synthetic biology tools have opened the door to three transformative research areas: 1) Identifying and exploiting the enzymes responsible for synthesizing known plant-derived chemicals, and 2) discovering new molecules from plants, and 3) developing new strategies for sustainably enhancing plant fitness. This talk will describe efforts in my lab to use a combination of biochemistry, synthetic biology, bioinformatics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics to accelerate the discovery and engineering of plant metabolism. We use both a candidate gene approach to uncover novel pathways and new molecules, as well as a candidate molecule approach for targeted elucidation of metabolic enzymes. Our vision is to build metabolic pathways from newly discovered enzyme catalysts that can enhance human health, plant health, and the production of sustainable chemicals.