Chia-Chi Peng studied chemical biology in Jena, where she started her PhD in 2018, and she is focused on the structural and functional analysis of bacterial natural products that induce morphogenesis in a single cell choanoflagellate. To be able to study the morphogenic activity, Peng was trained for three weeks in the group of Prof. King at UC Berkley (USA) in her first PhD year. Using this knowledge, she optimized the assay, which is now being used as tool to test morphogenic substances (synthetic and natural compounds). In parallel, she is interested in isolation and characterization of bacterial natural products from different bacterial marine species, which requires substantial expertise in HRMS- and NMR-based metabolomics that enabled her to analyze the newly isolated natural products.

Main Research Areas

• Structure elucidation of marine natural products
• Elucidation of biosynthetic pathways and ecological functions of natural products