Plant Natural Product Biosynthesis & Engineering

We are exploring plants for bioactive compounds and engineering tools, to diversify the chemical space of metabolites that can be functionally explored and utilized, e.g. as medicines.

Plants are extraordinary biochemists! They produce hundreds of thousands of small molecules termed specialized metabolites (i.e. natural products). These metabolites are of great importance for the survival of the plant. Additionally, they are important for us humans as they contribute flavor, fragrance and functional compounds to our lives. For example, plant specialized metabolites continue to be an indispensable source and inspiration for bioactive compounds like medicinal drugs.

Even though plants are treasure troves for bioactive metabolites, exploration and utilization is often hindered by the rare occurrence of some metabolites in nature and their structural complexity, making them inaccessible through chemical synthesis. Thus, finding ways to discover bioactive metabolites and subsequently achieve their production to enable functional exploration and utilization can be challenging.

In our lab we combine metabolite discovery with pathway elucidation and synthetic-biology-driven metabolite production, to obtain, diversify and test metabolites which are otherwise difficult to obtain.