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Evolving Nature’s Medicines in the Laboratory

A synthetic biology platform to discover, diversify, and evolve complex natural molecules, both small molecules and macromolecules, for safer and more effective therapies, including antibiotics and vaccines.

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Credit: Celine Wang

Discovery & Biosynthesis of Complex Natural Products

Mining, reconstructing, and engineering biosynthetic pathways to access structurally complex natural molecules in microbial hosts.

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Molecular Diversification & Laboratory Evolution

Engineering and evolving enzymes and pathways to generate new-to-nature molecules with improved activity, selectivity, and stability.

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Next-Generation Therapeutics & Vaccines

Microbial and cell-based platforms for producing and optimizing glycosylated drugs, antibiotics, adjuvants, and vaccine antigens.

Biosynthesis of natural products

Natural glycoside biosynthesis

Biosynthesis of terpene-based glycosides in engineered microbes

Yeast directed evolution

Glycodiversification of natural products

Directed evolution of glycosyl-transferases towards diversification

with non-native sugars and sugar sequences

automated glycan synthesizer

Automated glycan synthesis

An automated platform for the enzymatic synthesis of designer glycan sequences as a general tool for glycobiology research

Combining synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, as well as synthetic and analytical chemistry

Liu Lab @ Scripps

Collaborate. Communicate. Create.

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