Glucosinolates, phytochemicals found in cruciferous vegetables, are metabolised to bioactive isothiocyanates (ITC) by certain bacteria in the human gut. Substantial individual variation in urinary ITC excretion has been observed in previous cruciferous vegetable-feeding studies. We hypothesised that individual differences in gut microbial community contribute to the observed variation in glucos...

Plants employ highly variable chemical defenses against a broad community of herbivores, which vary in their susceptibilities to specific compounds. Variation in chemical defenses within the plant has been found in many species; the ecological and evolutionary influences on this variation, however, are less well-understood. One central theory describing the allocation of defenses in the plant i...

Glucosinolates are amino acid-derived natural products that, upon hydrolysis, typically release isothiocyanates with a wide range of biological activities. Glucosinolates play a role in plant defense as attractants and deterrents against herbivores and pathogens. A key step in glucosinolate biosynthesis is the conversion of amino acids to the corresponding aldoximes, which is catalyzed by cytoc...

The cabbage aphid, Brevicoryne brassicae, has developed a chemical defence system that exploits and mimics that of its host plants, involving sequestration of the major plant secondary metabolites (glucosinolates). Like its host plants, the aphid produces a myrosinase (beta-thioglucoside glucohydrolase) to catalyse the hydrolysis of glucosinolates, yielding biologically active products. Here, w...

Multiple lepidopteran larvae feed successfully on plants containing glucosinolates despite the diverse array of toxic and deterrent breakdown products, such as isothiocyanates (ITCs), formed upon plant damage. While much is known about how specialist lepidopterans metabolize and tolerate glucosinolates, there is little information about the metabolic fate of these plant defense compounds in spe...

In the Brassicaceae glucosinolates influence feeding, reproduction and development of many insect herbivores. Glucosinolate production and effects on herbivore feeding have been extensively studied in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica crops, both of which constitutively produce leaf glucosinolates mostly derived from the amino acid methionine. Much less is known about the regu...

Preharvest calcium application has been shown to increase broccoli microgreen yield and extend shelf life. In this study, we investigated the effect of calcium application on its metabolome using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry. The data collected were analyzed using principal component analysis and orthogonal projection to latent structural discriminate anal...