51�Թ�

This approach, published in 2017, was developed by Dmitri Kharzeev, a theorist affiliated with both Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University who is a co-author on the paper, and Eugene Levin of Tel Aviv University.

Then, the team performed X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a DOE Office of Science user facility at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, specifically working at the Beamline for Materials Measurement, which is funded and operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The study builds on earlier work by the Brookhaven team that uncovered molecular links between sugar levels and oil production in plants.

"This paper reveals the detailed mechanism that tells plant cells, 'we have lots of sugar,' and then how that signaling affects the biochemical pathways that trigger processes like plant growth and oil production," said Brookhaven Lab biochemist Jantana Blanford, the study's lead author.

"Identifying exactly how these molecules and proteins interact, as this new study does, brings us closer to identifying how we might engineer these proteins to increase plant oil production," said John Shanklin, chair of Brookhaven Lab's Biology Department and leader of the research team.