Sarah Szwarc is a postdoctoral researcher who joined the University of Basel in 2025. She earned her B.Sc. in Chemistry from the Sorbonne University, France, in 2019, where her thesis was focused on the synthesis of a furanoside precursor of potentially bioactive iso-nucleosides. At the Paris-Saclay University, she explored the   chemical   diversity   of   specialized   metabolites   produced   by “Kopara” actinomycetes and obtained her M.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2021. Sarah obtained her PhD in Natural Products Chemistry from the Paris-Saclay University in 2024, conducting methodological developments in analytical chemistry to identify enzymes catalyzing C-N cyclizations in monoterpene indole alkaloids.

Her   doctoral   work   included   pinpointing   an   enzyme   involved   in a  C-N   bond formation, isolating and characterizing natural products from the Apocynaceae family, and developing a monoterpene indole alkaloids MS/MS spectral database to analyze fragmentation patterns and clustering trends in molecular networks.

She now applies her expertise to investigate the early steps of the biosynthetic pathway of griseorhodin A, aiming to uncover key enzymes and reactions that govern its specialized metabolism.

Publication(s):

Szwarc et al. (2023): Combination of machine learning and empirical computation for the structural validation of trirosaline, a batural trimeric monoterpene indole alkaloid from Catharanthus roseus. Organic Letters, 26 (1), p. 274-279. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.orglett.3c03972.

Szwarc et al. (2024): Emerging trends in plant natural products biosynthesis: a chemical perspective. Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 82, p. 102649. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbi.2024.102649.

Méteignier et al. (2024): Harnessing the spatial and transcriptional regulation of monoterpenoid indole alkaloid metabolism in Alstonia scholaris leads to the identification of broad geissoschizine cyclase activities. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, 219, p. 109363. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphy.2024.109363.