“Trehalose: A new twist on sugar metabolism” will be presented by Mark Lagrimini, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After receiving my PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Iowa researching the mechanism of RNA processing in mammalians, I post-doc’d in North Carolina with Mary Del Chilton, learning plant molecular genetics and characterizing the class III peroxidase gene family in tobacco. This research was continued at the Ohio State University for the next 12 years in the Department of Horticulture & Crop Science. I left the university in 1998 to lead a plant metabolic engineering laboratory with Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. During this time I worked on the trehalose pathway in maize with regards to stress tolerance. After a six year hiatus as department head in Agronomy & Horticulture at UNL, I am starting up my research program in trehalose metabolism.