Natural Products Blog

We are delighted to announce the appointment of two new members to the Editorial Board of Natural Products Reports, Professors Ikuro Abe and Dirk Trauner who will be joining the Board in January 2012.

Ikuro Abe received his PhD degree in 1989 from The University of Tokyo under the direction of Professor Yutaka Ebizuka, where he studied chemistry and biochemistry of natural products biosynthesis.  After two years postdoctoral research with Professor Guy Ourisson at the CNRS Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles, and mostly with Professor Michel Rohmer at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse, in France (1989-1991), he went to the USA to work with Professor Glenn D. Prestwich at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1991-1996) and then at The University of Utah (1996-1998) as a Research Assistant Professor.  In 1998, he returned to Japan to the University of Shizuoka, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (1998-2009).  In 2009, he moved back to The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences as Professor of Natural Products Chemistry.

His main research interests focus on exploring and engineering natural products biosynthesis, see below for some examples of his work:

Enzymatic synthesis of cyclic triterpenes
Ikuro Abe
DOI: 10.1039/B616857B

Structure and function of the chalcone synthase superfamily of plant type III polyketide synthases
Ikuro Abe and Hiroyuki Morita
DOI: 10.1039/B909988N

Dirk Trauner was born and grew up in Linz, Austria. After studying biology and then biochemistry at the University of Vienna, he joined Professor Johann Mulzerʼs group at the Free University of Berlin to pursue natural products synthesis. In the late 1990s, he was a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Samuel J. Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. In 2000, Dirk joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he rose through the ranks to become an Associate Professor of Chemistry. In summer of 2008, he moved to the University of Munich, where he currently resides as a Professor for Chemical Biology and Genetics.

His research interests range from organic synthesis and natural products to chemical neurobiology and optochemical genetics. View his contribution to our Synthesis themed issue below:

The chemistry of marine furanocembranoids, pseudopteranes, gersolanes, and related natural products
Paul A. Roethle and Dirk Trauner
DOI: 10.1039/B705660P

The Editorial Office is pleased to announce the recent appointment of two new Advisory Board members for Natural Product Reports, Yeo Joon Yoon and Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani.

Yeo Joon Yoon received his PhD in chemical and biological engineering from Seoul National University in 2000. He has worked with Prof Charles R. Hutchinson at the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a predoctoral researcher and also with Prof David H. Sherman at the University of Minnesota as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2002 he returned to Korea as Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of Ulsan and then moved to Ewha Womans University in 2004, where he is Associate Professor of Chemistry.

His major scientific interests are the characterization of biosynthetic pathways for secondary metabolites, focusing on polyketides and aminoglycosides in actinomycetes, combinatorial biosynthesis of novel natural products, and the application of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology to the production of secondary metabolites.

Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani is full professor at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), and has published over 186 research publications, 5 patents and 4 book chapters. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and a Science Productivity CNPq Fellow, she has received several awards, the most recent is the Distinguished Woman in Science Chemistry and Chemical Engineering award conceived by the ACS & IUPAC. Her PhD degree in Organic Chemistry was obtained under the guidance of Professor Otto Richard Gottlieb, University of São Paulo and after a post-doctorate at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPISU-USA) she joined the São Paulo State University (UNESP). Dr. Bolzani is currently is Vice-Director of the UNESP Innovation Agency (AUIN), was President of the Brazilian Chemical Society from 2008-2010, and is currently Counsellor. 

Her field of interest is plant science, and she has been involved in the isolation, bioactivity and function of secondary metabolites and peptides from plants. Also she has studied biosynthesis of piperidine alkaloids, and recently has been involved in metabolomic studies of medicinal plants and sugar cane. She has strong work collaborations with national pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries looking for new drugs from plants species.