Plants versus bacteria. Who will win?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Bacteria are sneaky. Sure plants can use enzymes – like BGAL1 – to uncover them. But some bacteria can block those enzymes and stay hidden using a mystery molecule.
Scientists knew that this detection jammer existed, but couldn’t identify its structure. Until now.
Enter Nattapong Sanguankiattichai and team at the University of Oxford.
They used cryo-EM, which visualizes tiny molecules in a super frozen sample, to reveal the shape of the molecule! The researchers named it glycosyrin and made a synthetic version.
Surprisingly, molecules similar to glycosyrin can already treat some human diseases by blocking unwanted enzymes.
You heard it here folks – one plant’s poison is another man’s medicine!
Reference: Sanguankiattichai, N., Chandrasekar, B., Sheng, Y., Hardenbrook, N., Tabak, W. W. A., Drapal, M., Kaschani, F., Grünwald-Gruber, C., Krahn, D., Buscaill, P., Yamamoto, S., Kato, A., Nash, R., Fleet, G., Strasser, R., Fraser, P. D., Kaiser, M., Zhang, P., Preston, G. M., & van der Hoorn, R. A. L. (2025). Bacterial pathogen deploys the iminosugar glycosyrin to manipulate plant glycobiology. Science, 388(6744), 297–303. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp2433