Research

	Molecular Diversity in Nature Compounds found in Nature ('natural products') are central to almost all aspects of health and the environment, from interspecies communication, to pheromones, defense agents, and even toxins. Yet after over 100 years of studying the molecular science of natural products, we still know little about the breadth and diversity of chemical space in the natural world. Recently, analysis by our laboratory and others is revealing that this chemical diversity is much more structured than might be expected based solely on combinatorial permutations of natural products building blocks. A growing interest in our research program is the systematic investigation of chemical diversity in nature and the creation of frameworks to describe the chemical diversity of the natural world.
	Metabolomics It is still remarkably difficult to describe the chemical constitution of natural products extracts. Yet if we were able to accomplish this challenge, the resulting knowledge about natural products diversity and distribution would fundamentally alter many aspects of modern natural products science. Our group aims to address two outstanding challenges in this area. Using a combination of MS and NMR approaches, we are developing new tools for the untargeted characterization of natural products mixtures, with a specific focus on composition (how many different molecules are present, and how are they distributed between different samples?) and identity (what are the structures of these individual components?). This work is integrated with our ongoing natural products database project, the Natural Products Atlas.
	High-Throughput Screening Modern laboratory automation systems offer researchers a powerful toolkit for asking systems-level questions in disciplines ranging from drug discovery to analytical chemistry. Our laboratory employs the large-scale automation technology available through Simon Fraser University's Center for High-Throughput Chemical Biology (HTCB) to develop screening systems for human health targets. Our laboratory has a particular interest in using image-based screening with the Cell Painting protocol for mode of action determination, and the creation of new panel-based screening platforms for antibiotic discovery.
	Chemoinformatics and Data Science Computational chemistry and data science methods offer powerful opportunities to link chemical and biological properties from metabolomics and high-throughput screening experiments. Our group has a strong interest in the development of new informatics technologies for natural products discovery, which includes both the creation of open-source databases, and the development of new software packages and webservers for data analysis. You can learn more about these technologies on the Databases and Software pages.
	Natural Products Discovery Our laboratory remains fascinated by the many chemically and biologically unusual structures that can be found in Nature. We employ both high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) techniques to determine the structures of these exciting new metabolites, and use biological profiling methods from our high-throughput screening program to understand their biological roles in complex systems..