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Research

What we do

We begin with a specific need and identify key protein targets to address it. We engineer proteins using directed evolution – a synthetic biology approach that enables rapid development of protein variants with novel or enhanced functions. This approach allows us to 1) identify beneficial changes to crop proteins that can be introduced via gene editing and 2) generate large datasets to train machine learning models that can predict the function of additional protein variants.

We focus on

  • Resistance to pathogens and pests
  • Resilience to environmental stress
  • Photosynthetic efficiency

Directed evolution

Recent Publications

Full list on Google Scholar ↗

  • Integration of crop modeling and sensing into molecular breeding for nutritional quality and stress tolerance
    Berlingeri, J.; Fuentes, A.; Ranario, E. et al., 2025, Theoretical and Applied Genetics, DOI: 10.1007/s00122-025-04984-y

  • Directed Evolution of a Plant Immune Receptor for Broad Spectrum Effector Recognition
    Rim, E.Y.; Garrett, O.D.; Howard, A.J. et al., 2025, bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2024.09.30.614878

  • Combining Directed Evolution with Machine Learning Enables Accurate Genotype-to-Phenotype Predictions
    Howard, A.J.; Rim, E.Y.; Garrett, O.D. et al., 2025, bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2025.01.27.635131

  • Climate change challenges, plant science solutions
    Eckardt, N.A.; Ainsworth, E.A.; Bahuguna, R.N. et al., 2023, The Plant Cell, DOI: 10.1093/plcell/koac303

  • Plant immunity: Rice XA21-mediated resistance to bacterial infection
    Ercoli, M.F.; Luu, D.D.; Rim, E.Y. et al., 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2121568119