How do sunflowers make protein drugs in their seeds? We recently discovered in sunflower the origin of a small protein ring that chemists have used for a decade to base designed drugs upon. This project aims to know how sunflowers make it so we may manipulate other plants to manufacture ring-based drugs.
A new and rapidly evolving class of plant peptides. The project will study a diverse class of drug-like mini-proteins that are thought to have emerged genetically over 12 million years ago. This project will explore why plants have kept making these mini-proteins for so long and whether it is the same reason the founding member of this mini-protein class is such a good drug.