Gavin Williams

Area(s) of Expertise

The Williams Lab is interested in combining the power of biology and organic chemistry to provide access to new complex organic molecules. More specifically, we leverage enzyme engineering, biocatalysis, metabolic engineering, organic chemistry, and synthetic biology to access and diversify the structures of natural products. These efforts form an innovative and powerful platform for drug discovery.

Publications

• Directed Evolution of a Macrolide-Sensing Transcription Factor Biosensor for the Detection of Macrolactone Aglycones via "Effector Walking" and Efflux Pump Deletion , BIOCHEMISTRY (2025)
• Engineering the Specificity of Acetyl-CoA Synthetase for Diverse Acyl-CoA Thioester Generation , ACS CHEMICAL BIOLOGY (2025)
• Promiscuity of an Alcohol-Dependent Hemiterpene Pathway for the In Vivo Production of a Non-Natural Alkylated Tryptophan Derivative , ACS Synthetic Biology (2025)
• Engineering of a Malonyl-CoA Ligase for Production of Fluorinated Polyketide Extender Units , CHEMBIOCHEM (2024)
• Current State-of-the-Art Toward Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of Polyketide Natural Products , CHEMBIOCHEM (2023)
• Targeted enzyme modifications enable regioselective biosynthesis of fluorinated polyketides , CHEM CATALYSIS (2022)
• Computationally-guided exchange of substrate selectivity motifs in a modular polyketide synthase acyltransferase , NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2021)
• Development of Genetically Encoded Biosensors for Reporting the Methyltransferase-Dependent Biosynthesis of Semisynthetic Macrolide Antibiotics , ACS SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY (2021)
• Protein engineering for natural product biosynthesis and synthetic biology applications , PROTEIN ENGINEERING DESIGN & SELECTION (2021)
• Transcription factor-based biosensors: a molecular-guided approach for natural product engineering , CURRENT OPINION IN BIOTECHNOLOGY (2021)