Lysine Biosynthesis in Plants

The pathway by which plants synthesize the essential amino acid lysine was not completely clear. The goal of this work was to identify the genes that make up this essential pathway from plants. This led to the discovery of a novel enzyme L,L-diaminopimelate aminotransferase that is able to bridge the metabolic gap between two compounds that is necessary for lysine biosynthesis. This is important because attempts to produce plants that over produce lysine have been done without the knowledge of how plants synthesize this amino acid.