(10-08-26) York-Maastricht Partnership funding to BFFI/IBL
Researchers from Maastricht University and the University of York have received 2026 York-Maastricht Partnership Research Seed Funding for a new collaborative project, “Novel tools for multi-omics analysis for plant alkaloid biosynthesis”.
Plants produce an extraordinary diversity of specialised metabolites that help them respond to environmental and biological stresses. Many of these natural products are also valuable to society as sources of pharmaceuticals, flavours, agrichemicals and other bio-based products. However, discovering the genes and enzymes responsible for producing these compounds remains a major challenge because the underlying biosynthetic pathways are often distributed across different tissues, cell types and molecular layers. The new York-Maastricht collaboration will address this challenge by combining plant natural-product biochemistry, mass spectrometry, spatial biology and computational multi-omics. The project is led by Dr Kumar Saurabh Singh at the Brightlands Future Farming Institute, Maastricht University, and Prof. Benjamin Lichman at the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP), University of York, UK. The team will use the structurally complex Daphniphyllum alkaloids as a case study. These natural products represent a rich but still poorly understood area of plant chemistry. By bringing together existing genomic, transcriptomic and metabolomic datasets with newly generated single-nucleus RNA sequencing and imaging mass spectrometry data, the researchers aim to identify candidate genes, enzymes, tissues and cell types involved in alkaloid biosynthesis.
A major strength of the project is the complementary expertise of the two universities. The Lichman Lab at York contributes extensive experience in plant natural-product biosynthesis, pathway elucidation and experimental validation, together with access to Daphniphyllum material and existing multi-omics datasets. Maastricht contributes expertise in computational multi-omics integration and knowledge-driven pathway reconstruction. Imaging mass spectrometry expertise at the Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging Institute (M4I) will provide an additional spatial dimension by revealing where metabolites accumulate within plant tissues through the involvement of Prof. Ron Heeren and Dr. Mudita Vats. The expected outputs include a curated multi-omics resource, new experimental and computational workflows for spatially resolved pathway discovery, a ranked set of candidate biosynthetic genes, and experimental evidence supporting selected predictions. The partners also aim to establish a generalisable framework that can eventually be applied to other classes of plant natural products and other species like agricultural crops. Beyond the immediate research objectives, the seed funding is intended to establish a longer-term collaboration between York and Maastricht. Reciprocal research visits, joint analysis, researcher training and a dedicated multi-omics workshop will help connect York’s strengths in plant natural-product chemistry with Maastricht’s expertise in computational multi-omics and imaging mass spectrometry. The partners plan to use the resulting preliminary data and methodologies as the foundation for larger international funding applications focused on omics-based elucidation of plant chemistry, sustainable biotechnology and the bioeconomy.
“Plants produce an enormous diversity of chemistry, but connecting individual metabolites to the genes and enzymes responsible for their production remains extremely difficult. By combining computational multi-omics with spatial information and experimental validation, this collaboration gives us an exciting opportunity to develop powerful platform for discovering previously unresolved biosynthetic pathways.” Says Singh. Benjamin added that “Daphniphyllum alkaloids represent some of the most structurally fascinating natural products produced by plants. Combining our experimental knowledge of plant biosynthesis with Maastricht’s computational and spatial-omics expertise gives us a new way to investigate how this remarkable chemistry is assembled inside the plant.”
Please see the UM announcement here: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/medicines-plants-maastricht-and-york-unravel-biochemical-mystery