Assistant Professor
University of California, Davis
Davis, California
Yann-Ru Lou is a biochemist who studies the evolutionary history of diverse specialized metabolites that are produced by plants to interact with their environment. Despite our knowledge of enzymes and biosynthetic pathways behind these metabolites, connecting their evolving structures to functions and bioactivities remains a great challenge. Lou’s lab uses plant synthetic biology coupled with biochemical, metabolomics and computational approaches to investigate the evolutionary trajectories of plant chemical diversity. By applying biochemistry to chemical ecology, Lou’s lab seeks to identify important chemical modifications and products, reveal molecular mechanisms underlying biodiversity of specialized metabolites, and discover evolution-guided solutions for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology to create products useful to humans.
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
4:20 PM – 4:40 PM EDT