Examining what happens to fungicides once they're inside plants by mass spectrometry.
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Discovery of herbicides with new modes of action, new chemistries inspired by antimalarial drugs.
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Protein crystallography of new and known herbicide targets to enable ab initio herbicide design.
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Origins of diverse (often cyclic) plant peptides and the enzymology of their synthesis.
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Just out last week is work we patented back in 2021 where we were inspired by memory drug meclofenoxate (which we found is herbicidal), to make a pro-dicamba that doesn't drift. It's open access in Chem. Eur. J. (DOI).
Today was Josh's last day of work for a spell as he embarks on a career change! Herbicide work at CCDM will be continued by Dr Joel Haywood while the team's fungicide work will be driven by Dr Jordi Muria Gonzalez.
Out today in Nature Communications is our paper on statins, their target HMG-CoA reductase and its potential as a herbicide target. See the article via its DOI, PubMed, this Tweet and we wrote a Behind the Paper article.
Our research had two separate foci on two classes of agrochemical; to find truly new herbicides and pursue the in planta behaviour of fungicides. Our herbicide research aimed to find new herbicides, principally by directing our first efforts at finding and validating new modes of action. Our fungicide work began on arriving at CCDM in 2021 and sought to understand biotransformation led by mass spectrometry. In the further past we published work done on peptide biosynthesis, protease-mediated cyclisation and the genetic events that evolve new plant proteins.
Our applied herbicide work started with our finding that, thanks to the established close evolutionary relationship between plants and the malarial parasites, many antimalarial drugs are also herbicidal. After trawling antimalarial drug libraries for novel herbicide chemistries, we turned our focus to discovering novel modes of herbicide action. Our fungicide biotransformation work was inspired by colleagues at CCDM who seek to understand the basis for resistance by pathogens and investigate various means to improve crop health.
Check out the projects we used to do, check out Josh's Twitter feed, see what the lab published or get real and visit the team working on at CCDM! If you are interested in this work, get in touch by e-mail!
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