In the post-genomic era, we still lack an understanding of the metabolic pathways of important secondary metabolites in plants. This knowledge gap impedes progress in biotechnological applications and molecular breeding strategies, not only for plants, but also for microorganisms. We fill these gaps, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of biosynthesis in various plants of interest, and apply this knowledge to the reconstruction of pathway branches in microbial cell factories

This Unit takes advantage of the existing bio- and chemodiversity of plant species and bring together metabolomic, transcriptomic and genomic data to identify novel genes and their metabolic functions in the plants.