CBC Seminar, Dr Elizabeth Skellam - Elucidating Fungal Specialized Metabolism for the Discovery and Engineering of Novel Molecules, Enzymes, and Biosynthetic Pathways

Chemistry & Biochemistry Seminar

Dr. Elizabeth Skellam, Assistant Professor, University of North Texas

Natural products (also known as secondary metabolites or specialized metabolites) have had a huge impact on the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. Our group’s research interests are concerned with understanding and engineering the biosynthetic chemistry of fungi / plants for commercial applications.  For this to be realized we are a truly interdisciplinary research group using techniques adapted from bioinformatics, microbiology, synthetic biology, analytical chemistry, and synthetic organic chemistry. In this talk I will discuss how we have utilized the one strain many compounds (OSMAC) approach to discover novel fungal metabolites and how we utilize genome mining as the first step in understanding the biosynthetic pathways of different classes of natural products by identifying the most likely biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) . I will also describe a recent project where we utilize isotope-labelled feeding studies to understand the origin of an unusual oxime function group identified in some novel open chain cytochalasans of marine origin. Finally, I will share our latest unpublished results in engineering plants to produce fungal-derived medicines as a sustainable alternative to traditionally used fermentation approaches. 

References

1. S. Neupane, M. Amorim and E. Skellam, Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2024, 20, 321-330. 
2. M. Amorim, S. Schoellhorn, C. Barbosa, G. Mendes, K. Macedo, A. Ferreira, T. Venancio, R. Guido, A. Batista, J. Batista, E. Skellam and R. Berlinck, Journal of Natural Products, 2024, 87, 2204-2215.