Our current carbon economy relies on fossil fuels, from which we isolate small organic molecules to produce medicines, plastics, cosmetic, or other chemicals that we use everyday. However, sustainability requires a more biomass-based carbon economy, where we engineer plants to produce precursor molecules, which can then be assembled to desired chemicals that we use daily. Plants have evolved an amazing diversity of metabolites, but these metabolites are not produced in every cell of the plant. Therefore, it is essential to understand how plants can express different metabolic pathways across different organs, tissues, and even cell types. We are interested in the following questions: How are metabolic pathways (especially specialized metabolism) controlled by cell fate? How can we reprogram plant cell fates for biomanufacturing? How can we toggle between differentiated cell states for metabolic engineering and totipotent cell state for genetic engineering?

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The Triticeae tribe comprises species representing some of the world's largest food and forage crops, including common wheat, durum, barley, rye, and oat. Crop yields are continuously threatened ...

We seek a creative, collaborative, and visionary plant biologist to establish an internationally recognized research program at the forefront of plant-microbe interactions aimed at understanding how t...

A plant immune receptor evolved recognition of caterpillar peptides through key molecular changes.

Plants deploy a diverse array of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which perceive microbe-associated molecular patterns to activate immune responses. Leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase subgr...

Elevated temperature impacts plant immunity at the primary infection site, but how it affects immune preparedness for future infections remains unclear. Here we report that warm temperature suppresse...