Guest Speaker – Biology/Bioorganic (CHEM 731) – April 19, 2023

Bio
Wenjun Zhang is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at University of California Berkeley and the Charles R. Wilke Endowed Chair in Chemical Engineering. She did her doctoral training with Yi Tang at UCLA and her postdoctoral training with Christopher T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School before joining UC Berkeley in 2011. She has received awards such as Pew Scholar, NIH Director’s New Innovator, Sloan Research Fellow, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Finalist. Zhang Lab is broadly interested in natural product discovery, biosynthesis, engineering, and biological studies.

Abstract
Natural products, sometimes referred to specialized secondary metabolites, are important small molecules widely used as drugs, pesticides, herbicides, and biological probes. In addition to the biotechnological and pharmaceutical applications, many natural products are used by their producing organisms to control complex cellular processes such as virulence, morphological differentiation, stress response, nutrient acquisition, and defense, and thus playing critical roles in chemical ecology. Zhang lab is interested in new bioactive natural product discovery and functional study, as well as understanding and engineering the biosynthetic pathways of natural products. In this presentation, our recent efforts in identifying new bioactive natural products from human oral microbiome will be discussed. In addition, I will discuss our biosynthetic study for unique functionalities found in natural products, such as an N-hydroxytriazene pharmacophore conserved in the triacsin family of natural products.