UC Berkeley

Humans have exploited small molecule natural products have exploited throughout history. Recently, advances in chemistry and biology have led to an explosion in drug development, revolutionizing the treatment of infectious diseases, cancer, and other ailments. However, current techniques have already been exploited nearly to their limits. The work described in this dissertation aims to expand the pharmacological potential of small molecule natural products by developing a range of techniques that exploit functional chemical tags that are chemically bonded to the small molecules. These tags enable natural products to be studied in new ways using techniques such as Raman microscopy, computational analysis of LCMS data, and optical lock-in detection of FRET. By fundamentally altering small molecule natural products, we have raised the possibility to discover and study drug-like molecules that would be inaccessible using traditional techniques.