Plants are champion synthetic chemists! They take advantage of their metabolic prowess to produce an extremely large repertoire of structurally diverse natural products, also referred to as specialized metabolites. Our research team seeks to elucidate the biochemistry and evolution of metabolic pathways contributing to plants’ adaptation to their environment.

The present PhD project is funded by the IDEX International doctoral program of the University of Strasbourg. The project aims at deciphering genes contributing to the biosynthesis of novel trichome-specific alkaloids present in several Solanaceae species, the molecular mechanisms underlying the evolution of this pathway and the ecological functions of these alkaloids in plant-insect interactions.

The project will be conducted at the IBMP and will benefit from facilities hosted in this institute, including a state-of-art metabolomics platform to explore plant metabolic diversity. This project also includes active collaborations with research teams in Germany.