Chi Ting

My research program focuses on organic synthesis and biosynthesis of natural products. Natural products have been a tremendous source of new medicine, particularly in the area of antibiotic drug discovery. A major challenge of 21st century organic synthesis is how to prepare these compounds efficiently to enable their study as therapeutics. Our lab is interested in devising concise total syntheses and developing new reactions to access motifs found in natural products. An area of interest is chemoselective functionalization of peptides to access ribosomally synthesized post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs). The development of such methods would allow for rapid access to peptide natural products and analogs thereof. In addition to chemical synthesis, we are interested in the discovery of new secondary metabolites from microorganisms. While traditional isolation methods have resulted in rediscovery of previously known natural products in the past, genome mining represents a complementary method for identifying new natural products by finding biosynthetic gene clusters that encode their biosynthesis. Biosynthesis of unusual natural products that have unknown biosynthetic origins will be investigated as such examples represent a breach in knowledge of how Nature prepares such compounds. Novel biosynthetic strategies will be used as inspiration to fuel our synthetic endeavors.