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

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

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...

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:

That is our goal, we already have some candidates to test from our transcriptomes in Aze-producers, more to come soon.

Interestingly, Aze has been known for a long time, first discovered by Fowden in 1956 in Lily of the Valley onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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.