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Wenjun Zhang, Ph.D.

Photo of Wenjun Zhang

TitleAssistant Professor
DepartmentDepartment of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
InstitutionUniversity of California, Berkeley
Address201 Gilman Hall, MC 1462
City, State, ZipBerkeley, CA 94720
Phone(510) 643-8682
E-Mailberkeley.edu
Websitewww.cchem.berkeley.edu/wzgrp
Research FieldChemical and Synthetic Biology
Award Year2012

Research

Microbial cells have been programmed to have exquisite catalytic power in the synthesis of a large array of small molecules with a broad range of functions. Examples include signaling secondary metabolites related to bacterial pathogenesis, or complex natural products with pharmaceutical applications. Advances in our understanding of microbial biosynthetic machineries will provide unprecedented opportunities to unveil the identity and function of new bioactive metabolites, and to biosynthesize target molecules such as complex drugs with high yield and efficiency. The research themes in my laboratory include genome mining for new bioactive secondary metabolite discovery, biosynthetic pathway enzymes identification and characterization, pathway design toward combinatorial natural product biosynthesis, as well as engineering of pathway enzymes for biocatalysis application. Our approach will combine the principles in microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, protein engineering and metabolic engineering.

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2012 Scholars


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