UC Davis

The ability of plants to produce an incredible diversity of small molecules and complex polymers has made them an integral component of lives and societies. We have long harnessed the diversity of chemicals found in plants as food, commodities, and medicine. While plants innately produce millions of useful chemicals, biotechnology has allowed us to further tailor plants to our needs. An integral component of plant anabolism is the attachment of sugars to various chemicals, whether it be to small molecules or complex glycans. This unique specialty of plants creates novel opportunities to expand the ways in which we can improve their properties. In this work, we utilized the innate metabolism of plants to generate a variety of glycosides and glycans. First, we optimized the production of a glycoside, glucoraphanin, to permit expanding the portfolio of plants that produce this beneficial compound. Second, we developed transgenic crops capable of converting glucoraphanin from an inactive form to a chemopreventive form following cooking, thereby improving the nutritional quality of cooked foods. Last, we demonstrated the ability of plants to economically produce milk oligosaccharides, complex glycans that are normally produced only by mammals. Together, these results demonstrate our ability to engineer plants for improved nutritional quality and the production of novel compounds.