Uhrig Lab Research Overview

Plants are more sophisticated than they appear. Every leaf is running thousands of molecular calculations every hour adjusting to light, anticipating stress, fine-tuning the proteins that keep the cell alive and productive.

The Uhrig Lab at the University of Alberta is dedicated to understanding those calculations at the deepest level: the protein level. We combine quantitative proteomics, mass spectrometry, biochemistry, and plant genetics to map how plant cells regulate themselves, with a particular focus on the daily (diel) cycle of protein activity controlled by the plant circadian clock.

Our work spans fundamental discovery using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana to translational agricultural applications in canola, barley, wheat, and corn — crops that matter for Canadian and global agriculture.

Pillar 1: Fundamental Plant Research: How do plants know what time of day it is? How do they prepare for stress before it arrives? We study the protein-level mechanisms behind circadian regulation and diel cell biology — the layer of plant science that transcriptomics alone cannot reveal.

Uhrig lab image

Key questions we are addressing:

1. Which proteins cycle in abundance over a 24-hour period and do these match gene expression patterns?
2. Which enzymes are clock-controlled by PTMS and what enzymes are responsible?
3. How does the diel proteome change under stress and what does this reveal about plant resilience?​

Recent Publications:
1. Smith et al., 2025 - Plant Cell & Environment
2. Li et al., 2025 - ​New Phytologist 
​3. Mehta et al., 2024 - Science Advances


​[To learn more about our fundamental research]

Pillar 2: Translational Crop Research: A key Uhrig lab goal is to help create the crop solutions of tomorrow through the use of AI-enabled, integrated multi-modal omics (MMO) approaches. In collaboration with our many academic, government and industry partners, the Uhrig lab continues to make lasting contributions to enhanced crop breeding, diagnostics, and agriculture climate resiliency. Our work involves both field and controlled growth environment crop research with Brassica napus (canola), Hordeum vulgare (barley), Triticum aestivum (wheat) and Zea mays (corn).

Key questions we are addressing:

1. Proteomics of nutrient acquisition in Brassica napus canola
2. Clubroot disease proteomics in Brassica napus canola
3. Protein-level drought resilience mechanisms in barley and wheat

Recent Publications:
​1. Scandola et al., 2026 - Journal of Experimental Botany
​2. Grubb et al., 2025 - Proteomics 
3. Grubb et al., 2024 - Plant Cell & Environment
[To learn more about our crop research]

Pillar 3: Technology Development: We don't just use proteomics tools,  we build new ones. Our lab develops novel mass spectrometry workflows, AI-enabled plant phenomics pipelines, and protein analysis resources freely available to the global research community.​

Key Advancements

1. Development of BoxCarDIA for deeper plant & crop proteomic analysis
2. FAIMSpro enabled fast-flow acquisition workflows
3. AI-enabled plant phenomics platform
4. Bioorthogonal Noncanonical Amino Acid Tagging (BONCAT) labeling for nascent plant protein detection & quantification

Metha et al., 2022 - Analytical Chemistry

Recent Publications:
​1. Hassan et al., 2026 - Plant Physiology
2. Rodriguez-Gallo et al., 2023 - Molecular & Cellular Proteomics
3. Sakeef et al., 2023 - Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal
4. Mehta et al., 2022 - Analytical Chemistry
​5. Schlapfer et al., 2021 - Nucleic Acids Research
​​[To learn more about our technology development research]