A study from the University of Cambridge Department of Plant Sciences sheds new light on how one of the world’s oldest land plants, the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, builds and fills its specialised chemical storage units.
The research advances our understanding of how the plant produces and stores valuable natural compounds and could transform how we produce high-value medicines, such as anti-cancer drugs and therapeutic compounds, using sustainable plant-based factories.
Professor Jim Haseloff, Head of the Synthetic Biology for Engineering Plant Growth group at the Department of Plant Sciences said: “Edith Forestier, who led this work, has brought her deep expertise in specialised metabolism in complex plant systems to the liverwort, a model with a minimalist genome and cell structure. She has leveraged this simpler system to provide new insights into reengineering plant bioproduction.”
The paper was published in ‘Communications Biology’ on 10 April 2026.
Mapping liverwort oil bodies
At the heart of this discovery are liverwort oil bodies — unique, membrane-bound structures found within Marchantia that act as natural storage tanks for terpenes.
Terpenes are organic compounds found in many plants. They are responsible for the scents and flavours of plants like citrus and pine and prevent fungal infections or attract pollinators in other species.
In Marchantia they act as defensive chemicals to protect the plant from being eaten and are stored in specialised oil bodies to protect other parts of the plant from their potential toxic effects.
In this study, the team developed a detailed map of where Marchantia builds sesquiterpenes — a main group of terpenes — by tracking both gene signals and the resulting proteins and using advanced confocal microscopy.
They found that oil body cells are the primary ‘factories’ for terpene synthesis and that oil bodies appear to be the main sites where these terpenes are ultimately stored.
Towards ‘green factories’
As well as their important functions in plants, terpenes are also essential for humans — used widely in medicine, agriculture, food, and other industrial applications for their anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and other bioactive properties. Understanding how liverworts produce and store these compounds could be a powerful ally in this.
The unique compartmentalisation of their oil bodies could pave the way for cellular manufacturing as a low-cost, sustainable alternative to traditional chemical synthesis. By using oil bodies as natural reservoirs, scientists could potentially turn plants into ‘green factories’ to produce high-value chemicals that might otherwise be harmful to the plant.
To test this potential, the researchers successfully engineered Marchantia to produce two exogenous (non-native) compounds:
- Taxadiene: a key precursor to the potent anti-cancer drug Taxol®.
- Beta-amyrin: a precursor to compounds like glycyrrhizin, the natural sweetener found in liquorice.
The study found that while these compounds could be produced, simply overexpressing ‘rate-limiting’ enzymes was not enough to significantly boost yields within the oil bodies. This suggests that future engineering efforts must focus not just on the enzymes that make the compounds, but also on the transporters to move them into storage.
The role of MpABCG1: a molecular gatekeeper
A central finding of the research is the identification of a specific transporter protein, MpABCG1, located on the oil body membrane. The researchers found that this protein acts as a gatekeeper, contributing to the accumulation of chemicals into the oil bodies for storage.
When they disabled this protein using CRISPR technology, the plant's ability to accumulate endogenous (native) sesquiterpenes was dramatically reduced, proving that production alone isn't enough — the plant also needs an efficient ‘logistics’ system to move the chemicals into storage.
Dr Edith Forestier, lead author of the paper, said: “This discovery changes how we think about plant metabolism. It is often assumed that increasing the number of enzymes will increase the amount of product. While this can work in some systems, our results show that in Marchantia, transport and storage are just as important as production.
“This means that if we want to use plants to produce valuable molecules, such as terpenes used in pharmaceuticals or cosmetics, we need to consider not only how much of the product is made, but also how it is transported and where it is stored.
“Understanding this could help scientists better design plants as ‘green factories’ to produce useful compounds more efficiently.”
Future directions
The research highlights the complexity of plant metabolism and the importance of cellular architecture. By understanding how Marchantia regulates its oil bodies, the Cambridge team is laying the groundwork for more sophisticated plant-based production systems.
Dr Forestier said: “An important part of this work was showing not only what worked, but also what didn’t—and why. By being transparent about these limitations, we hope to help others avoid repeating the same strategies and instead build on these findings more effectively.”
As we move toward a bio-based economy, these insights into the fundamental ‘plumbing’ of plant cells will be essential for the sustainable production of the next generation of medicines and industrial materials.
Funding and author information
This research was led by Dr Edith Forestier who was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Haseloff lab at the University of Cambridge at the time. Dr Forestier joined the Sarkisyan Lab at Imperial College London in April 2025 where she is a Senior Research Associate working on the production of natural compounds for industrial, cosmetic and medicinal purposes.
The work was funded by the BBSRC NEBP Transition Award (BB/W014173/1) with part support from the BBSRC/EPSRC OpenPlant Synthetic Biology Research Center Grant (BB/ L014130/1) to Jim Haseloff. Ignacy Bonter was funded by a Herchel Smith studentship.
Reference: Forestier, E.C.F., Asprilla, P., Bonter, I. et al. ‘Spatial distribution of isoprenoid enzymes and MpABCG1 transporter influences sesquiterpene accumulation in Marchantia polymorpha oil bodies.’ Communications Biology (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-025-09508-4
Image: A young Marchantia plant (‘gemma’, a clonal bud) visualised using fluorescent proteins that highlight different cell types and structures. Image provided by Edith Forestier.