(Bio-)Synthesis of Bacterial Natural Products

Bacteria biosynthesize a plethora of structurally diverse secondary metabolites. These compounds are particularly interesting due to their typically potent biological activities. We are interested in their isolation and structure elucidation as well as in their biosynthesis. To this end, we use a combination of molecular biological methods and bioinformatics tools.

We also perform total syntheses of novel active compounds, since often only minute amounts are produced by the respective microorganisms. Moreover, we synthesize derivatives for structure-activity-relationship studies.