Paige Henning, a postdoctoral researcher in the Sussman Lab, received the 2025-26 Boyer Award for Postdoctoral Excellence in Biochemistry. The award was made possible by Professor Paul D. Boyer, who earned a Ph.D. (1943) from the department. It is presented annually by the Department of Biochemistry to a postdoctoral researcher in recognition of their excellence in research.
“I’m honored and humbled and happy to have received this award. It’s a kind of validation that I have developed the skills and tools that I sought out to when I joined the Sussman Lab,” says Henning.
Henning’s research has focused on identifying the proteins responsible for distyly in Turnera, a plant species in the passionflower family. Distyly is an evolutionary adaptation in some plants that restricts the plant’s ability to pollinate itself, ensuring genetic diversity across a population. As a graduate student at Washington State University, Henning characterized two of the three proteins responsible for distyly in Turnera. In the Sussman Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, she characterized the third, a hormone called SPH, as well as proteins that interact with SPH, including a receptor found in most plant species.
“I am both proud and honored to be Paige’s postdoctoral mentor for the past 3-4 years,” says Sussman. “She is super smart and super dedicated to science and will be a great professor some day. I am teaching her protein chemistry and she is teaching me developmental biology so it is a quid pro quo that is quite awesome for both of us.”
Henning found that when SPH is applied to plants, it inhibits plant growth and can even kill seedlings. Plants unable to produce a receptor for SPH, however, grow normally when SPH is applied.
Henning and other scientists in the Sussman Lab are now investigating whether SPH can be used as a herbicide. Engineering crops that are immune to herbicides such as glyphosate is common practice in agriculture, allowing for herbicides to be applied uniformly across a field without impacting the health of the crops. Henning and her colleagues are exploring whether crops can be engineered lacking the receptor protein necessary to interact with SPH, leaving them to grow normally when SPH is applied.
“Unlike glyphosate and other common herbicides, SPH would be much safer for farmworkers to apply and wouldn’t have the same environmentally harmful impacts,” says Henning. “It is also safe to eat. When crops are sprayed with herbicides, those chemicals stay on our food and accumulate in our bodies. That wouldn’t be a concern with SPH.”
Henning, along with Michael Sussman and scientist Benjamin Minkoff, have filed for a patent with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).
Henning will share about her research at the annual Paul D. Boyer Lecture on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. in room 1211 of the Hector F. DeLuca Biochemical Sciences Building. The lecture will be followed by a reception in the building’s atrium.
Written by Renata Solan.