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C-SPIRIT News: August 2025
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025
August brought fresh momentum for C-SPIRIT, with new progress and achievements to share. This issue features a blogpost on Aim 4, an Institutional Feature on the University of Tsukuba, recent publications from our global research community, upcoming conferences in plant science, and highlights from our social media presence. Read on for the latest updates from across the center!
Aim 4 Feature: Blogpost Out Now!
Wondering what the Aim 4 team has working on and how they contribute to the C-SPIRIT pipeline? Read our new blogpost titled Making it Work: How C-SPIRIT’s Aim 4 Synthesizes Bioactive Compounds for Sustainable Agriculture featuring Dr. Nicola Patron, Aim 4 lead and plant synthetic biologist at the University of Cambridge. Here's a preview:
“C-SPIRIT’s long-term strategy goes beyond rebuilding natural pathways. With modular constructs and diverse biosynthetic tools, researchers hope to produce families of novel molecules that are more effective or more stable than their natural counterparts.
'We could produce a panel of molecules that don’t exist in nature and might be more powerful antifeedants,' Patron says. 'We can do this by combining enzymes from different species to produce new variations on chemical structures.'
To support this vision, the Graham lab is conducting comparative structural analyses of isoprenoid synthases and assembling a curated set of biosynthetic parts for combinatorial design. All available, relevant terpenoid plasmids are being collated and shared across the C-SPIRIT network. These resources are already being used to design experiments that test new combinations of genes and pathways."
Institutional Feature: University of Tsukuba
This month, our Institutional Feature highlights the University of Tsukuba and its wide-ranging contributions to C-SPIRIT research. Seven outstanding researchers are part of the University of Tsukuba team, including members from the Kusano, Miura, and Ezura labs. Their work spans the discovery of metabolites that enhance crop resilience, the genetic pathways that govern their production, and the evaluation of promising findings through lab and field studies. We are fortunate to have this talented group of researchers as part of C-SPIRIT, advancing discoveries that strengthen our shared mission for sustainable agriculture.
Publication from the C-SPIRIT Canada Team!
Congratulations to C-SPIRIT members Sean Robertson, Asher Pasha, Nicholas Provart, and Olivia Wilkins and their colleagues on their new article titled “Growth-limiting drought increases sensitivity of Asian rice (Oryza sativa) leaves to heat shock through physiological and spatially distinct transcriptomic responses”! Published in The Plant Journal, the study shows that even mild drought makes rice leaves more vulnerable to heat stress, uncovering spatially diverse gene expression patterns that provide fresh insights into plant responses under combined environmental challenges.
Publication from C-SPIRIT Member Gaurav Moghe!
Congratulations to C-SPIRIT member Gaurav Moghe and his colleagues on their new article in Applications in Plant Sciences titled “Advances in analyzing and engineering plant metabolic diversity”! The piece introduces a special issue showcasing innovative methods, including improved extraction protocols, optogenetic tools, and AI-driven analysis, that are expanding the toolkit for exploring plant chemistry. The work highlights how these approaches can accelerate the discovery of plant metabolites and broaden their applications in agriculture, medicine, and biotechnology.
Publication from the Kinoshita Lab!
Congratulations to C-SPIRIT member Toshinori Kinoshita, his lab, and their colleagues on their new article in Nature Plants titled “Apoplastic fluid metabolites from red-light-treated leaves promote stomatal opening”! The study shows that sugars and other metabolites released into the apoplast under red light stimulate stomatal opening by promoting ion transport and activating H⁺-ATPase phosphorylation. These findings highlight a novel mechanism linking mesophyll activity to guard cell behavior during photosynthesis.
Publication from the Rhee Lab!
Congratulations to C-SPIRIT member Sue Rhee, along with her lab members Evan Saldivar and Sterling Field, on their new article in New Phytologist titled “Cellular view of metabolism: metabolic biomolecular condensates”. This Tansley insight explores how biomolecular condensates, which form without membrane boundaries, contribute to the spatial organization of metabolic processes in plant cells. The authors highlight how this emerging area of research could inform new strategies for controlling metabolic flux and enhancing bioengineering efforts in plants.
First Great Lakes Plant Science Conference – September 12-14, 2025
The Great Lakes Plant Science Conference will bring together plant scientists and students to push the boundaries of plant science, promote collaborations, and empower the next-generation plant science leaders. This conference is organized by 10 universities in the states and provinces around the Great Lakes and open to anyone in the world.
C-SPIRIT member Andrea Glassmire from Michigan State University will be a speaker at this event, giving a presentation titled "Insect Scales, Water Stress, and Shoreline Takeover: The Metabolome Behind a Reed’s Invasion."
Details:
- Dates: Friday, September 12th - Sunday, September 14th
- Location: The Lansing Center, Lansing, MI, United States
- Registration Deadline: August 31, 2025
Plant Epigenetics and Epigenome Engineering – October 13-16, 2025
The Plant Epigenetics and Epigenome Engineering conference brings together international scientists from all career stages and research settings that develop and apply novel approaches to understand the role and regulation of the plant epigenome. The meeting will feature recent discoveries illuminating the contribution of non-histone chromatin proteins and regulators, histones, and DNA modification on gene regulation, genome organization, development, and environmental and species interactions, with particular emphasis on innovative epigenome technologies that help uncover fundamental epigenetic mechanisms in diverse plant species. A workshop by early career researcher talks followed by a panel discussion will focus on utilizing epigenome manipulation to enhance desirable traits in plants and foster interactions and collaborative investigations.
Details:
- Dates: Monday, October 13th - Thursday, October 16th
- Location: Hilton Fort Collins, Fort Collins, CO, United States
- Registration Deadline: N/A
21st SMB Plant Biology Congress & 4th ASPB Mexico Section Meeting – October 20-24, 2025
The 21st PSMB Plant Biology Congress & 4th ASPB Mexico Section Meeting will include Keynote and Plenary lectures from prestigious academic leaders in plant biology that will address the state of the art in scientific topics including plant metabolism, plant development, abiotic stress, plant biotic interactions, evolutionary plant biology and plant genetics and genomics. This meeting strengthens the ties between Mexican and US researchers and their interaction with peers, particularly young investigators and students. We especially encourage the participation of young scientists, motivated students, and postdocs to submit their abstracts to be considered for talks.
C-SPIRIT Director Seung Yon (Sue) Rhee from Michigan State University will be a speaker at this event, giving a talk titled "Drug discovery for agriculture: Center for Sustainable Plant Innovation and Resilience through International Teamwork (C-SPIRIT)".
Details:
- Dates: Monday, October 20th - Friday, October 24th
- Location: Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico
- Registration Deadline: N/A
Let us know about your upcoming talks!
Want to see your presentation/talk listed here? Feel free to email us at C-SPIRIT.Admin@msu.edu if you would like us to advertise your talk!
August 7th, 2025 | via LinkedIn Shogo Kuwayama and Kwangchul Shin, C-SPIRIT members from the Kinoshita Lab at Nagoya University, visited Michigan State University last week following the 2025 ASPB Plant Biology Conference in Milwaukee. While they are currently conducting their research in Japan, they will return to MSU from September through November as visiting researchers in The Rhee Lab. |
August 11th, 2025 | via BlueSky 🌱 C-SPIRIT in the news! Full story: |
August 19th, 2025 | via LinkedIn Dr. Seung Yon (Sue) Rhee, Director of the Plant Resilience Institute and C-SPIRIT, will deliver two invited talks at the upcoming international workshop "Cutting-Edge Plant Biotechnology: Driving the Future of Agriculture" taking place August 25–27, 2025 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. |
August 20th, 2025 | via BlueSky C-SPIRIT at the Single-Cell GRC! 🌱 |
