The first part of the talk will focus on our efforts in genome mining of fungal natural products. The recently sequenced genomes of several Aspergillus species have revealed that these organisms have the potential to produce a surprisingly large range of natural products, many of which are currently unknown. We have found that A. nidulans produces emericellamide A, an antibiotic compound of mixed origins with polyketide and amino acid building blocks. Additionally, we describe the discovery of four previously unidentified, related compounds that we designate emericellamide C-F. Using recentuly developed gene targeting techniques , we have identified the genes involed in emericellamide biosynthesis. Additional I will present several approaches to activate cryptic biosynthesis pathways in this organism. The second part of the talk will of the talk will focus on the development of a general heterologous host for natural product production and manipulations.
Short Biography: Clay Wang received his A.B. from Harvard University Department of Chemistry under the guidance of Professor George Whitesides (1996), Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Professor Peter B. Dervan (2001), and carried out postdoctoral research at Stanford in the laboratory of Chaitan Khosla (2001-2003). He was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California in 2003.The current research of the Wang Lab involves heterologous expression of natural products using E. coli and discovery of natural products in Aspergillus nidulans
