WHAT IS NATURAL PRODUCTS CHEMISTRY RESEARCH? | My PhD and Me | Summary and Q&A

TL;DR

A PhD student explains the field of natural products chemistry and introduces diverse research projects in the Marine Biodiscovery Center.

Key Insights

• 🫒 Natural products chemistry studies compounds produced by living organisms, with applications in human drug discovery and environmental solutions.
• 👨‍🔬 Researching these compounds helps understand ecosystems and how organisms synthesize them, providing insights into marine and terrestrial environments.
• 🤢 The Marine Biodiscovery Center conducts various projects focusing on deep sea sponge chemical ecology, antibiotics discovery, drug discovery, enzyme improvement, and antibacterial and antifungal compounds.
• 📽️ The collaboration between researchers from different countries adds diversity to the projects and enhances knowledge sharing.
• 🦻 Computational analysis is also an important aspect of natural products research, aiding in data analysis and understanding compound properties.
• 💦 Many researchers are working on discovering new drugs, exploring unexplored samples, and finding novel antibiotic compounds.
• 👨‍🔬 Collaboration between different disciplines, such as chemistry and biology, is necessary for successful natural products research.
• 😒 The use of natural products for environmental applications, like preventing biofouling, is gaining importance in marine industries.

Transcript

laughs hello and welcome to my Channel or welcome back to my channel if you've watched some of my videos before if you haven't watched any of my videos before my name is Jessica and I'm a final year PhD student at the University of Aberdeen for my PhD research I research in an area called natural products chemistry and today I wanted to explain a l... Read More

Questions & Answers

Q: What is natural products chemistry?

Natural products chemistry studies metabolites and chemicals produced by living organisms, such as plants, bacteria, fungi, and marine invertebrates, with a focus on finding applications in the human world.

Q: What are the applications of natural products research?

Natural products research looks for compounds with specific bioactivity, like anti-cancer or antimicrobial properties, for drug discovery purposes. It also helps understand ecosystems and organism behaviors, and can contribute to finding environmental solutions.

Q: What is biofouling?

Biofouling is a process that occurs in the marine environment, where organisms attach to surfaces and form layers, causing damage to structures. Natural products chemistry aims to find compounds that can prevent biofouling and be used in anti-fouling paints for marine industries.

Q: What are some of the projects being conducted at the Marine Biodiscovery Center?

The projects range from deep sea sponge chemical ecology, antibiotics discovery, drug discovery from natural products, enzyme improvement for sustainable plastic production, to finding antibacterial and antifungal compounds from marine invertebrates and microorganisms.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The content is an introduction to natural products chemistry, which studies the metabolites and chemicals produced by living organisms.

• Natural products chemistry focuses on finding applications for these compounds in the human world, such as for drug discovery or environmental solutions.

• The content also includes introductions to various research projects being conducted by lab colleagues at the Marine Biodiscovery Center, covering topics like deep sea sponge chemical ecology, antibiotics discovery, and drug discovery.