Why are they called BICYCLE Proteins? Listen to Stern explain.

What comes next

That’s why Stern’s next chapter isn’t just about what was found, it’s about figuring out what this family of proteins does. “Now we’re doing cell biology…” he said. “Now we’re doing genetics…"

His team hopes to uncover exactly how the BICYCLE proteins contribute to the plant. After 15 years at HHMI Janelia, Stern arrived at the Institute in early February, bringing his lab to Kansas City—and a determination to see this project through.

“Some people would say, maybe I should be thinking about retirement,” he said. “But I feel like a graduate student all over again—and Stowers is one of the few places on earth that embraces that vision. All I want to do is scale up this project and answer these questions.”

The work now moves from tracking where these proteins end up inside plant cells to knocking out aphid genes and testing their actual functions. But it's not a simple problem to solve. Stern is blunt about what that feels like.

“None of this is easy,” he said. “Discovering really new stuff in biology is not easy.” Sometimes, he added, the latest and greatest technology "does nothing." Sometimes what you need is old-fashioned.

“My favorite old-fashioned technique is genetics,” he said. “There’s just nothing as powerful as genetics.” He describes pairing modern sequencing with foundational experiments that go back nearly 200 years, combining new tools with classic logic.

Hiding in plain sight

In any forest around the world, if you open your eyes, look closely, or, as Stern would say, "think like a poet," you will find the exact subject of his research.

"It's called a gall," he said. "Look at what's happening on the leaves or on the stems of plants anywhere, and you'll see them."

When the aphids inject proteins into the plant, they completely transform the plant's tissue. This creates the gall, or a "home", that they live within. “They're ubiquitous...all over the world...but we know almost nothing about how the insects are controlling the plants," Stern added.

“So, we can see what this entirely new family of proteins look like — but we still don’t know how they operate or why.

His team's next move, he said, is “to understand how they’re interacting with their target molecules.”

“We’re currently trying to see where these proteins go in the cell,” he said. “We do actually know where they’re going in the plant, and that gives us some understanding of what they’re doing.”

Why it could matter for food and crops

Beyond solving a mystery, the work has a significant potential impacts on human health. “We take for granted that food appears in the grocery store…and we don’t really think very often about, well, 'how did this get here?'” he said.

Much of modern agriculture depends on preventing crops from being eaten by pests, especially insects.

Not all pests are equally controllable. Some insects, like caterpillars, chew leaves. In those cases, pesticides on the leaf surface can work. But sap-sucking insects are different. They’re “highly specialized predators of plants,” Stern said, able to thread their mouthparts through plant tissue to feed in ways that can help them avoid many of the usual preventative measures we typically rely on.

That’s part of why Stern is confident about the potential. “Our lab has also discovered that these proteins are essential for aphid survival,” he said. Because the proteins are produced in salivary glands and injected into plants, those glands may be an “Achilles’ heel for sap-sucking crop pests worldwide.”

Aphids are sometimes called the “mosquitoes of the plant world.” They don’t just feed on plants, they also spread disease. Stern said the findings may “open the door to next generation pest control strategies that are precise, effective, and safe.”

A new office...in the lab

Stern sees his new home at the Stowers Institute as the right next step, noting it's one of "few places on earth" built to support "true, curiosity-driven research."

And he’s clear about where he wants to do that research: “My office is the lab,” Stern said. “I love pipetting. I love running gels. I love doing experiments…and I’m happiest when I’m with my people doing science.”

In fact, that's how this whole project began. "I started it with my own hands, on the side," Stern recalled. "It's a problem I was just always fascinated by for decades, so I just started doing experiments."

Along the way, people in his lab joined him. Eventually, it led them to the field, taking a poet's approach to look closely at what others may have missed—and then return to the lab to report what they found. 

Now, it's ultimately led him here. 

"Even from an early age, one of my favorite hobbies was going and getting lost in the woods," he said. "So yeah, these habits, they're pretty deep in my soul."