A new paper by PMN members Hiroshi A. Maeda, Sueng Y. Rhee, Charles Hawkins, and Marcos V. V. de Oliveira, was recently published in Nature Plants.

Titled “Mapping multi-substrate specificity of Arabidopsis aminotransferases,” this paper lays the groundwork for engineering crops that use nitrogen more efficiently, reducing our dependence on harmful fertilizers. It also helps scientists better predict and model plant behavior under different environmental conditions.​​​​​​

Plants naturally manage nitrogen through a set of enzymes called aminotransferases (ATs), which help build vital compounds like amino acids. Since scientists don’t fully understand how versatile these enzymes really are, this study aimed to map their “hidden talents.” They found a number of previously unrecognized AT activities during this study, which led to them discovering new N metabolic connections.

The data from this paper has been deposited into the Plant Metabolic Network online resource, which increases the experimentally validated functional data.

You can read the full paper here!