Heiner Weddeling joined the University of Basel as a PhD student in 2023. Before, he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in 2020 from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, where his research focused on the NMR characterization of a Melanoma Inhibitory Activity (MIA) protein variant. In 2022, he earned his Master's degree in Biochemistry from the same institution, completing a thesis on the structure-guided optimization of eugenol oxidase from Streptomyces cavernae for applications in oxidation cascades.

Currently, Heiner is investigating the biosynthesis of multiple aromatic polyketides with various bioactivities. These natural products are produced by type II polyketide synthases (PKS) and often undergo extensive post-PKS tailoring by enzymes that modify their initial structures into mature natural products. By identifying and characterizing these enzymes, he aims to enable the targeted modification of scaffold molecules. His work encompasses microbiological techniques, classical biochemistry, and analytical chemistry methods such as LC/MS and NMR.

Heiner's research contributes to understanding the structural and mechanistic aspects of tailoring enzymes in bacterial secondary metabolism, with a special interest in generating atypical pharmacophores.

Publication(s):

Eggerichs et al. (2024): Substrate scope expansion of 4-phenol oxidases by rational enzyme selection and sequence-function relations. Communications Chemistry, 7, p. 123. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-024-01207-1.