A new course was added in the spring of 2025 at the University of California, Davis led by PMN members Philipp Zerbe and Farida Yasmin, that focuses on mapping the chemistry of Arboretum plants in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden.

As part of UC Davis’ new Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE), this course offers undergraduates the chance to contribute to real-time research, receive impactful mentorship, and be able to share research results with stakeholders.

In the course, Professor Zerbe’s students would collect samples from the arboretum, photograph the plants they took the samples from, and note the plant’s GPS coordinates. The students would then take the samples to the lab, where they would use chemical solvents to extract metabolites from the plant sample. They would then use a gas chromatography mass spectrometer to separate the different metabolites. The extracted metabolites would then get compared to the Plant Metabolic Network to identify the most common metabolites in each sample. By the end of the semester, the class catalogued metabolites from a total of 36 species.

Professor Zerbe hopes to keep the momentum going, by offering this class on an annual basis and hopes to help expand the network to include more diverse species.

For more information on this course, visit the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences.