Seminar: "Chemical and Biological Surprises from Sponges" Dr. Brandon Morinaka

Speaker:

Dr. Brandon Morinaka

Institute of Microbiology

ETH Zurich (Switzerland)

Title: "Chemical and Biological Surprises from Sponges"

Abstract

Marine sponges have been a prolific source of unique chemistry and biochemistry. These natural products have attracted attention for the treatment of human diseases because of their diverse molecular architectures, biochemical specificity, and 'drug-like' properties that make them suitable for clinical applications. The molecular diversity of bioactive natural products from marine sponges I have encountered during my undergraduate and graduate research will be presented. During my postdoctoral research I have investigated the biosynthesis of the highly cytotoxic and pore-forming peptides known as the polytheonamides. These ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptides derive from a bacterial symbiont of the sponge. The identification of the polytheonamide gene cluster and how this pathway has lead to the discovery of two exciting enzymes from the radical S-adenosylmethionine superfamily will be presented.

Biography

Dr. Morinaka was born and raised in California. He obtained his B.S. (2003) in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz and conducted research on marine natural products with Professor Phil Crews. He then moved to UC San Diego where he obtained his Ph.D. (2011) in organic chemistry in the laboratory of Professor Ted Molinski working on isolation and structure determination of sponge derived bioactive natural products. He then moved to the ETH Zurich for his postdoctoral research with Professor Joern Piel. His current research focuses on the biosynthesis of ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified peptide natural products.