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The Diversity in Biology Speaker Series: Looking for Unknown Unknowns in Specialized Metabolism
March 17, 2022 at 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Free
The Diversity in Biology Speaker Series invites you to attend a talk by Dr. Mehran Dastmalchi.
Plants produce a diverse array of specialized metabolites, contributing to or inspiring many medicines in use today. The study of plant metabolism has revealed their secrets—such as opium poppy and Madagascar periwinkle—responsible for a host of analgesic and anti-cancer drugs.
The first step in leveraging plant biochemistry is knowledge of the genes, enzymes, and auxiliary components required to convert simple compounds to complex drugs. Attempts to reconstitute such pathways in heterologous systems have encountered “carbon loss” in the form of unexpected by-products.
Dr. Dastmalchi will discuss what auxiliary features in plants circumvent, or even preclude, branching pathways.
About the Speaker
Dr. Mehran Dastmalchi joined McGill University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Science in the Fall of 2020. He is setting up a research program to study metabolism in legume species (Fabaceae), with interest in pathways producing defense and health compounds. He received his PhD from Western University in 2015.
