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

• 1 Directed evolution of a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase for improved perillyl alcohol biosynthesis via a tailored genetically encoded biosensor , ChemRxiv (2026)
• Development of a transcription factor-based biosensor strain for reporting α-terpineol production via the alcohol-dependent hemiterpene pathway in Escherichia coli , RSC Chemical Biology (2026)
• Engineering an Acyl‐CoA Ligase With Enhanced Activity Toward Synthetic CoA Alternatives , ChemBioChem (2026)
• 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)