Plants produce the hormone jasmonic acid as a defence response when challenged. This is how they ensure that their predators no longer like the taste of their leaves. Biologists want to find out whether biological precursors and other variants of jasmonic acid lead to similar or different effects. But such derivatives of the hormone have so far been too expensive for experiments and difficult to come by. Researchers have now found a method that might make the production of a biologically significant precursor of jasmonic acid more efficient and cheaper.
