Discovery and Engineering of Small Molecule Biosynthetic Pathways

ABSTRACT

Nature performs challenging synthetic transformations using powerful enzymes.  These enzymes are frequently found in the biosynthetic pathways of natural products, many of which have served as inspirations for generations of synthetic chemists over the last fifty years. With recent advances in our abilities to manipulate the biosynthetic pathways, many powerful enzymes in novel natural product biosynthetic pathways have been revealed and characterized.  In this talk, I will present a selection of recent work in the identification, characterization, and engineering of biosynthetic pathways.  I will present the use of different genome mining approaches to identify novel natural product scaffolds and biological activities, as well as metabolic engineering of yeast to produce high value compounds.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yi Tang received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering and Material Science from Penn State University.  He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Prof. David A. Tirrell.  After NIH postdoctoral training in Chemical Biology from Prof. Chaitan Khosla at Stanford University, he started his independent career at University of California Los Angeles in 2004.  He is currently the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Chair in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA, and holds joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Department of Bioengineering.  His awards include the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2012), the EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2012), NIH DP1 Director Pioneer Award (2012), the ACS Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry (2014) and the Society of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology Charles Thom Award (2019).  He coauthored several books with Prof. Christopher Walsh, including “Natural Product Biosynthesis, Chemical Logic and Enzymatic Machinery” of which 2nd edition is now available.