Outline of the research

Nature could provide us with compounds with various chemical structures and biological activities to satisfy our pharmaceutical demands. Since then we have been developing drugs by isolating, identifying, and clinically studying naturally sources compounds. Even now the chemical structure of the natural compounds is still important for the drug development. On the other hands, current studies have also revealed that some of the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of natural products exert remarkable substrate promiscuity. Thus, we can now generate unnatural novel compounds by exploiting the remarkable substrate promiscuity of these enzymes. Furthermore, engineering of the enzymes can also increases the production of the unnatural novel compounds.

Hence, my research mainly focuses on 1) discovery of naturally occurring bioactive compounds from plants and marine sponges, and 2) studies of the biosynthesis of natural products including enzyme engineering.