April 21
@
4:00 PM
–
5:00 PM
Sijin Li
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
Interactomics-driven discovery and characterization of plant natural product biosynthetic pathways in yeast
Plants are a rich source of small-molecule drugs and drug leads. Traditional methods for sourcing valuable plant natural products (PNPs) from their native producers are often limited by cost and inefficiency. Leveraging recent advances in synthetic biology and plant multi-omics analysis, our work has demonstrated that yeast is a viable platform for elucidating and reconstructing complex PNP biosynthetic pathways. We have developed an interactomics-driven strategy to capture post-translational protein-protein interactions between plant enzymes to elucidate pathways. Combined with prevalent genomics and transcriptomics analyses, this integrated approach led to the discovery and characterization of multiple PNP pathways from non-model plants, highlighting the potential of synthetic biology to revolutionize PNP-based drug discovery and development