Department of Chemistry - CSU, Chico
Faculty and Staff
Daniel J. Edwards
Biochemistry
Phone: 530-898-5226
Campus ZIP: 210
Department Phone: 530-898-5259
Building: PHSC 329
E-mail: djedwards@csuchico.edu
Web Page: http://www.csuchico.edu/~djedwards
Biography
Daniel Edwards was born 1973 in Yreka, California. During his childhood he lived in Etna, California. He attended Gonazaga University where he participated in an undergraduate research program with Dr. Joanne Smieja (inorganic synthesis). At Gonzaga University he realized that he wanted to pursue a career where he could combine his interest in teaching with his fascination of the interface of chemistry and biology. He graduated with a BS in chemistry with a biochemistry option in 1996. He then pursued graduate work at the University of California at Davis working with Dr. Ben Shen (currently at University of Wisconsin, Madison) studying the biosynthesis of bleomycin, a widely used chemotherapeutic agent used to fight certain tumors. He received his PhD in organic chemistry in 2001. Dr. Edwards continued his training as a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Dr. William Gerwick in the School of Pharmacy at Oregon State University from 2001-2004. At Oregon State, his work included natural product isolation and structural elucidation, as well as studies into the underlying biosynthesis of several toxins that are derived from marine cyanobacteria. From OSU, Dr. Edwards moved to Willamette University where he spent the 2004-2005 academic year as a visiting assistant professor teaching general, organic and biochemistry courses.
In the fall of 2005 Dr. Edwards joined the faculty at California State University, Chico. Dr. Edwards teaches biochemistry, organic chemistry, and general chemistry courses. He is also actively developing research projects in the areas of bioorganic and natural product chemistry, focusing on the characterization of new bioactive natural products from cyanobacteria and studies to decipher the biochemical transformations involved in the assembly of fascinating natural products.
Research
Pharmaceutical companies rely heavily upon natural products or compounds inspired by natural products to treat a variety of aliments. Natural products have played an especially prominent role in the areas of infectious disease and cancer. Despite the success of a few blockbuster natural product drugs, many other promising leads have not advanced to the clinic because of supply issues. Traditionally the supply of natural product is met by direct isolation from the producing organism or by chemical synthesis. However, in many cases it has proven impractical to culture or collect a sufficient amount of an organism for large scale isolation of a lead compound. If the desired compound has considerable structural complexity then chemical synthesis can be a challenging and often costly means to produce the desired compound. It is clear that better techniques need to be developed to produce natural products if we want to fully exploit the rich chemistry that nature provides.
Our research group is focused on finding new natural products from cyanobacteria, a promising source of bioactive compounds, and on harnessing the biosynthetic machinery of these organisms to help address the supply issues related to natural product drug development. We are currently using the tools of genetics and biochemistry to develop an understanding of how these compounds are assembled by the biosynthetic enzymes. Once a basic understanding of the biosynthesis is developed it is possible use genetic engineering tools to develop recombinant organisms that have the capacity to produce high yields of the desired natural product.
One of the main projects in our lab focuses on studying the biosynthesis of lyngbyatoxin A, an environmental toxin isolated from the marine cyanobacterium Lyngbya majuscula. Lyngbyatoxin is a pharmacological tool compound used to study protein kinase C and tumor promotion. Despite interest in the biological activity of lyngbyatoxin, the formation of the nine membered indolactam ring and of the all-carbon quaternary center of Lyngbyatoxin A has proved difficult and has hampered the development of an efficient asymmetric chemical synthesis of this compound. Recent isolation of the lyngbyatoxin biosynthetic gene cluster has led to the identification of a P450 monooxygenase (LtxB) that is responsible for the oxidation and cyclization of N-Me-L-Val-L-Trpol to (-)-Indolactam-valine (ILV) and a reverse prenyltransferase (LtxC) that attaches a prenyl group to ILV to generate lyngbyatoxin A. Work in our lab is concerned with mechanistic characterization of the LtxB and LtxC enzymes and development of chemoenzymatic applications of these enzymes in the synthesis of lyngbyatoxin and lyngbyatoxin analogs.
Marine Cyanobacteria Lyngbya majuscula
