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Deadly flowers point the way to potent new medicines
Scientists have figured out how two famously poisonous plants create chemicals with surprising medical potential. After tracking thousands of genes in wolfsbane and larkspur, they identified six enzymes needed to build a complex compound called atisinium. The team recreated the process inside tobacco plants, offering a sustainable way to produce and test these rare molecules in larger amounts.
Lignocellulosic biorefineries make liquid fuels out of non-food plant material, such as crop waste or trees and grasses grown just for energy. In addition to biofuel, these refineries generate energy-rich byproducts that can be a source of additional income. These side hustles not only pad the bottom line, they make biofuels more competitive by allowing refiners to sell the fuel for less money.
Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center co-investigator Vatsan Raman has been tapped to oversee research within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The first member of his family to attend high school, Changsu Kim is now a third-year PhD student in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UW–Madison. He specializes in molecular dynamic simulations and artificial intelligence and has worked with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center to design models for selecting the best solvent mixtures for isolating lignin, a chemical-rich but hard to process part of plant cell walls.
In addition to carrying out basic science, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center serves as a training ground for the next generation of scientists, with more than 1,500 trainees who have gone on to work in academia, government, and industry roles.
Diterpenoid alkaloids have a wide range of uses, from natural pesticides to treatments for cancer, malaria, inflammation, pain, and nausea. But their complex structures make them extremely difficult to create in the lab, meaning natural production, or biosynthesis, is the most promising alternative. These findings mark the first established pathway for a diterpenoid alkaloid, enabling biosynthetic production and serving as a basis for discoveries that could lead to production of more complex products.
Samuel Chagas is a postdoctoral researcher in Rebecca Smith’s lab, where he studies the composition of plant cell walls in sorghum and corn to develop crops that are easier to digest, whether for biofuel or animal feed.
Sarada Sripada is a postdoctoral researcher working in the Sener lab. She studies reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF) with the goal of deconstructing lignin, the woody part of plant cells, into smaller molecules that microbes can convert into valuable products such as PDC, a chemical that can be used to make bioplastics.
Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center co-investigator Troy Runge, an associate dean and professor of biological systems engineering, has been selected to serve as interim dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
As a microbiologist, Trey Sato occasionally witnesses a genetic interaction, a rare phenomenon that occurs when the combination of two traits results in an impact greater than the sum of its individual parts. He sees a parallel in his career.
Since joining GLBRC in 2022, Dae Kwan Ko has helped develop computational frameworks and data sets that support other GLBRC scientists in the quest for genes that contribute to more resilient and bountiful bioenergy crops.
