Elizabeth Sattely

My laboratory is focused broadly on plant chemistry and is deeply invested in pathway discovery. Despite the important roles of plant natural products in plant and human health, very few complete plant biosynthetic pathways are known. This lack of knowledge limits our understanding of natural product mode of action in plants and prevents access to engineered pathways. New plant genome sequences and synthetic biology tools have enabled three research areas in my lab: 1) methods for accelerating pathway discovery in plants (especially for clinically used therapeutics), and 2) discovering new molecules from plants that are important for plant fitness, and 3) using metabolic engineering in plants as a tool to systematically and quantitatively determine the impact of plant molecules on human and plant health and ultimately optimize plant fitness and crop nutrient load. I am looking for postdocs who are interested in joining an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers to discover how plant natural products are made and their mode of action, and develop new tools for engineering biosynthetic pathways. Our vision is to use engineered biosynthesis to reveal mechanisms by which natural products from plants contribute to plant fitness and human health.