Abscisc acid plays an important role in seed dormancy and water use in plants and quantifying the concentration of the natural hormone is important in plant science and horticulture. In new work published in the Open Access journal PLOS ONE, the Marsh research group (Chemistry) and Napier research group (Life Sciences) combine asymmetric synthesis and a surface plasmon resonance sensor to show that a single chain variable fragment (scFv) antibody discriminates the natural enantiomer of the hormone from the inactive enantiomer and other similar compounds.