Rate My Professor Ryan Nett

Ryan Nett is an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology in the Biology faculty at Harvard University, specializing in plant biochemistry. He received a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2012 and a Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Iowa State University in 2017. In Reuben J. Peters' laboratory during graduate school, Nett investigated gibberellin biosynthesis in nitrogen-fixing bacteria associated with legume root nodules, demonstrating that bacterial gibberellin production enhances nodule size and revealing convergent evolution between bacterial and plant pathways, as detailed in his 2017 Nature Chemical Biology paper, 'Elucidation of gibberellin biosynthesis in bacteria reveals convergent evolution,' and a 2022 ISME Journal article, 'Production of the plant hormone gibberellin by rhizobia increases host legume nodule size.' Following his Ph.D., he conducted postdoctoral research in Elizabeth Sattely's laboratory at Stanford University, where he discovered the complete biosynthetic pathway for the anti-inflammatory alkaloid colchicine in Gloriosa superba, engineered its production in a model plant, and achieved total chemical synthesis, published in Nature (2020), PNAS (2021), and JACS (2021).