March 14, 2004:  St. Louis Post-Dispatch publishes the article "From Green to Clean" on research in the Jez and Smith labs.  Click here for the PDF.   March 19, 2005: Congratulations to Kiani Arkus for the "Best Undergraduate Presentation Award" at the American Society of Plant Biology (Midwest Section) Meeting.  Kiani, a Wash. U. undergrad and former NSF-REU intern at the Danforth Center, presented her work on chlorophyllase, an enzyme involved in chlorophyll degradation.   May 5, 2005: First Floor April/May Birthday Celebration Summer, 2005: The Jez Lab and Honorary Members from Divergence (left to right): Lavanya, Katherine, Billy (Divergence), Joe, Kathy (Divergence), Becky. Missing: Kiani. Photo courtesy of Kyle Taylor (Wang Lab). March 24, 2006: Kiani was awarded an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund SUMR Program Fellowship for research during the summer of 2006.   July 16, 2006: St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the Pfizer-Solutia STARS Program. Click here for the article.   July 26, 2006: Joe was named a recipient of the 2005 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Click here for the White House press release. Click for a larger version October 24, 2006: The newest addition to the lab: Kayleigh Catherine Jez.     February 1, 2007: Kumaran received an ASBMB Postdoctoral Travel Award and Kiani an Undergraduate Student Travel Award for the 2007 Experimental Biology Meeting in Washington, DC. March 29-April 2, 2007: First Huazhong Agricultural University-Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Bilateral Symposium on Crop Functional Genomics in Wuhan, China.

April 11, 2007: Amy was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship by the American Society of Plant Biologists.

July 23, 2007: At the 2007 Phytochemical Society of North America meeting, Joe received an Arthur Neish Young Investigator Award. These awards are presented by the Society to promising young investigators in plant biochemistry each year. In addition, Kiani won the Best Undergraduate Poster Award, presented by Prof. Zenk (see photo).

Summer, 2007: The Jez lab.

Septermber 29, 2007: Kumaran was a speaker at the 27th Midwest Enzyme Chemistry Conference in Chicago, where he presented his work on protein-protein interactions in plant cysteine biosynthesis. February 8, 2008: St. Louis Post-Dispatch publishes an article "Company Turns to Danforth Plant Science Center to Develop a Green Plastic" on the collaboration between the Danforth Center and Metabolix that is funded by the Missouri Life Science Trust Fund. Click here for PDF March 18, 2008: Matthew was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship by the American Society of Plant Biologists. April 2008, Joe joins the Editorial Board of The Journal of Biological Chemistry. June 2008, Amy presents her ASPB-SURF fellowship research at the ASPB meeting in Merida, Mexico. July 1, 2008, Joe appointed as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Washington University