By revealing how a single stress signal rewires a bacterium’s entire metabolism for chemical production, JGI scientists provide a blueprint engineers can use to design more efficient microbial factories. Identifying specific genes, regulatory elements and metabolic pathways that enable that shift provides engineers concrete targets for optimization. The study offers a template — integrative analysis of multiple omics data from various environments — that JGI users can leverage to create a more complete picture of how microbes control useful chemistry in other organisms. Learn more on the JGI’s website.