Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Hans Renata, Scripps Research, Florida

Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Hans Renata, Scripps Research, Florida
Date
Wed October 28th 2020, 4:00 - 5:00pm
Location
Zoom

Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Hans Renata, Scripps Research, Florida (Host: Noah Burns)

About the Seminar

"Biocatalytic Strategies for Streamlining Access to Complex Molecules"

By virtue of their unrivaled selectivity profiles, enzymes possess remarkable potential to address unsolved challenges in chemical synthesis. The realization of this potential, however, has only recently gained traction. Recent advances in enzyme engineering and genome mining have provided a powerful platform for identifying and optimizing enzymatic transformations for synthetic applications and allowed us to begin formulating novel synthetic strategies and disconnections. This talk will describe our recent efforts in developing a new design language in chemical synthesis that centers on the application of biocatalytic retrosynthetic logic. Case studies will focus on the use of this platform in the chemoenzymatic syntheses of complex natural products.

About the Speaker

Hans Renata received his B.A. degree from Columbia University in 2008 and earned his Ph.D. from The Scripps Research Institute in 2013 under the guidance of Prof. Phil S. Baran. After postdoctoral studies with Prof. Frances H. Arnold at Caltech, he began his independent career at The Scripps Research Institute in 2016. His research focuses on synthetic and biosynthetic studies of natural products and biocatalytic reaction developments.

Photo courtesy of Scott Wiseman.