Research projects
In the lab, we plan several main branches of research, all centered on specialized metabolites and how these affect the ways plants interact with their environment, with shifts in focus, studied organisms and metabolites and some variation in the research methods
Negin Lab
Understanding the function of plant specialized metabolites
Our lab studies the function of specialized metabolites in plants, focusing on environmental interactions, in a natural setting as well as under more controlled laboratory conditions.
To study this, we use molecular biology, mass spectrometry, functional assays both on the plants themselves and in interaction with insects and experiments in a natural setting.
Developing native species as chemical ecology models
Different plants' metabolomes are shaped by the many interactions they experience with their surroundings. For this reason, there is importence to also examine the function of specialized metabolites in an environment which has adapted interactors, and to which the plants have adapted themselves. Here, we will be able to examine how remiving metabolites or metabolite combinations will affect specialist and generalist herbivores, natural enemies, competing vegatation and more. We will first focus on two species - Erysimum crassipes (אריסימון תמים), which produces both cardiac glycosides and glucosinolates, and Brachypodium distachyon, from the grass family, which have received less focus in the study of chemical ecology. Here too methods that will be used include metabolic profiling using LC-MS, RNA-seq, genome editing through CRISPR, and functional assays with plants in the field and lab.
Why do plants make the metabolites we consume?
In our daily lives we are surrounded by plant metabolites. Caffeine in coffee, tea and chocolate, nicotine in cigarettes, morphine and its derivatives as pain killers and capsaicin, which gives chilli peppers their pungency. Despite our daily interaction with these compounds, reasons that plants produce them and how they contribute to the plants' interactions with their surrounding are often poorly understood. Caffeine for example has been suggested to be involved in many different roles - from protection from herbivory and to preventing birds from digesting caffeine-containing seeds. However, it is difficult to truly understand the function without examining this metabolite in a whole, native plant context. Methods that will be used in this project include genetic engineering and genome editing of coffee plants, targeted metabolic profiling using LC-MS and functional studies in the greenhouse and controlled conditions.
Effects of specialized metabolite tiers in tobacco
Nicotiana benthamiana has long been a model organism for heterologous gene expression. Recently we have utilized a new method for genome editing in this plant to adapt it as a model also for chemical ecology, studying combinations of different specialized metabolites on environmental interactions. We are currently interested in examining how volatile compounds which these plants produce protect them from herbivores, and to what extent this protection involves recruitment of natural predators.
Methods that will be used in this project include profiling of volatiles using GC-MS, RNA extraction and analysis of RNA-seq, genome editing using virally delivered CRISPR and finally assays with herbivors and predators in the lab and outdoors.