Natural Product Research Group

Chin-Soon Phan official photo

Dr. Chin-Soon Phan

Group leader
e-mail: chinsoon@osi.lv

The Natural Product Research Group focuses on discovering microbial natural products from the Baltic area. These Baltic microbial natural products are relevant to human health, and our interest extends to gaining a fundamental understanding of their structures, biosynthesis, and biological activities.

He was trained in marine natural products chemistry and obtained his PhD from UMS, Malaysia. He then carried out postdoctoral research in natural products biosynthesis at the Hokkaido University (Tatsufumi Okino and Toshiyuki Wakimoto) and National University of Singapore (Brandon I. Morinaka). He started his independent research group at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis since Dec 2023.

graphic illustration

Selected publications

  • Khan A. H., Haedar J. R., Kiselov V., Romanuks V., Smits G., Donadio S., Phan C.-S.* Radical SAM enzyme WprB catalyzes uniform cross-link topology between Trp-C5 and Arg-Cγ on the precursor peptide. ACS Chem. Biol. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.4c00693

  • Phan C.-S., Ling Z., Mehjabin J. J., Matsuda K., Iman P. N., Umezawa T., Wakimoto T., Okino T. Doubly homologated tyrosine-containing peptides from the cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa NIES-4285 and their biosynthesis. J. Nat. Prod. 2024, 87, 2629-2639. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.4c00972

  • Phan C.-S., Morinaka B. I. Sequence-function space of radical SAM cyclophane synthases reveal conserved active site residues that influence substrate specificity. RSC Chem. Biol. 2024, 5, 1195-1200. https://doi.org/10.1039/D4CB00227J

  • Phan, C.-S., Morinaka, B. I. A prevalent group of Actinobacterial radical SAM/SPASM maturases involved in triceptide biosynthesis. ACS Chem. Biol. 2022, 17, 3284-3289. https://doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.2c00621

  • Phan, C.-S., Matsuda, K., Balloo, N., Fujita, K., Wakimoto, T., Okino, T. Argicyclamides A-C unveil enzymatic basis for guanidine bis-prenylation. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 10083-10087. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c05732

 Selected patent

  • Morinaka B. I., Sugiyama R., Yao Z., Ee P. L. R., Tram D. T. N., Morishita Y., Phan C.-S., Lim J. Peptides with antimicrobial properties. 2024, PCT patent no. PCT/SG2023/050524.

  • Wakimoto T., Okino T., Matsuda K., Phan C.-S. Novel prenylating enzyme. 2022, PCT patent no. PCT/JP2022/004501.

Published on 13.12.2023.; Updated on 03.02.2025.