Buried treasure: bioactive plant seed proteins evolving inside hosts (ARC Discovery Project administered by The University of Western Australia) (2019-2022)

Scientists now realise that new genes and proteins appear frequently. A recent discovery in plant seeds involves DNA sequence insertions in a gene that makes two proteins instead of one. This project will examine how evolution in plants shortcuts the creation of new proteins by burying one within another. It will reveal a new family of buried seed proteins, determine the rules for burying them and search plants for new examples. The project aims to prove this evolutionary mechanism found in plants is rapid, important and widespread. The first examples from plants create strongly bioactive products so the ability to dig for similar plant events will reveal new and bioactive natural products with biomedical and biotechnology applications.