Yit-Heng Chooi

Research

Genomics-based natural product discovery and secondary metabolic pathway engineering. Yeast is used as a heterologous host for expression of large fungal biosynthetic enzymes (polyketide synthases and nonribosomal peptide synthetases) and for production of small molecule secondary metabolites. The small molecules that I am interested include drug molecules, toxins and molecules involved in host-pathogen interactions. I also use yeast for DNA assembly and have an interest in the transcriptional regulatory networks.