Plants are master chemists, and Michigan State University researchers have unlocked their secret of producing specialized metabolites.
Plants are master chemists, and Michigan State University researchers have unlocked their secret of producing specialized metabolites.
The research, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combined plant biology and machine learning to sort through tens of thousands of genes to determine which genes make specialized metabolites.
Some metabolites attract pollinators while others repel pests. Ever wonder why deer eat tulips and not daffodils? It’s because daffodils have metabolites to fend off the critters who’d dine on them.
The results could potentially lead to improved plants but also to the development of plant-based pharmaceuticals and environmentally safe pesticides, said Shin-Han Shiu, an MSU plant computational biologist.
Read more at Michigan State University
Image: Shin-Han Shiu is a professor of plant biology at MSU. He and colleagues recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Photo by G.L. Kohuth.)
