Conor J. McClune, PhD

Dr. McClune [HHMI Fellow] investigates plant biosynthesis of therapeutic compounds. Approximately half of FDA-approved chemotherapeutics, including first line drugs like paclitaxel (Taxol) and vinblastine (Velban), derive from the arsenal of defensive chemicals that plants synthesize. Unfortunately, both the discovery of new plant-derived therapies and their scalable production are limited by intrinsic challenges of plant biology and genomics. Dr. McClune is developing systematic methods for identifying the biosynthetic pathways plants use to produce defensive molecules. Using single-cell technology, he will characterize rare cells responsible for synthesizing potentially beneficial chemicals and identify the enzymes they use to produce such molecules.