To access the Zoom link, please contact Professor Gavin Williams at gjwillia@ncsu.edu

Title:

Biocatalytic utility of aromatic prenyltransferases for the late-stage modification of natural products

About the Speaker:

• Ph.D., 1996, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
• Postdoc, 1997-1998, MSKCC
• Postdoc, 2000-2003, Utrecht University

Research in the Singh laboratory lies at the interface of chemistry and biology. We use tools and methods from biochemistry and structural biology to characterize new enzymes from natural product biosynthetic pathways; molecular biology techniques to engineer enzymes to generate better biocatalysts; and synthetic chemistry methods for the generation of precursors necessary for natural product diversification. The fundamental goal of research in Singh laboratory is to understand and exploit natural product enzymes for developing biologically active molecules against cancer and infectious diseases. Our lab is especially interested in exploiting the ability of late stage enzymes from natural product biosynthetic pathways for the structural diversification of complex natural products. Despite the fact that structural diversification of biologically active molecules by attaching different chemical moieties has great potential to generate new drug leads, chemical methods often suffer from selectivity and tedious purification steps. Our goal is to exploit the potential of natural product enzymes and generate chemoenzymatic-tools for facile attachment of chemical moieties in a stereo- and regio- selective fashion to complex molecules towards the generation of biologically active compounds.