Engineered living materials for the conversion of a low-cost food-grade precursor to a high-value flavonoid.

Microbial biofactories allow the upscaled production of high-value compounds in biotechnological processes. This is particularly advantageous for compounds like flavonoids that promote better health through their antioxidant, anti-bacterial, anti-cancer and other beneficial effects but are produced in small quantities in their natural plant-based hosts. Bacteria like have been genetically modified with enzyme cascades to produce flavonoids like naringenin and pinocembrin from coumaric or cinnamic acid.

Development of a Streptomyces-based system for facile thioholgamide library generation and analysis.

Derivatizing natural products (NPs) is essential in structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies, compound optimization, and drug development. Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) represent one of the major classes of natural products. Thioholgamide represents thioamitide - a recently emerged family of RiPPs with unique structures and great potential in anticancer drug development.