The biosynthesis of microbial small molecule natural products is of great interest: at times they exhibit useful properties, which stand in stark contrast to potent toxins and carcinogens threatening human or plant health. My research interests are focused on the secondary metabolism of filamentous fungi, in particular the genetics and the biochemistry natural product assembly are based on. The current efforts are directed towards the Aspergillus nidulans metabolic pathway for terrequinone A, the model compound for the whole asterriquinone class of fungal compounds.
Natural product research is an interface discipline par excellence and always relies on the interaction and the input of chemistry, biochemistry, ecology and genetics. In turn, disciplines ranging from plant pathology and chemical ecology, food toxicology to drug discovery in pharmaceutical sciences benefit from the results. What I probably like most is the diversity of people I interact with - researchers and students with so different professional backgrounds and their amazingly different approaches to go about answering the same question.
I am involved in graduate teaching and provide an introductory fungal biology course. During the summer break, I teach a botany course and field trip to the Austrian Alps for undergraduate students in my previous academic home, the University of Freiburg,Germany. http://www.pharmazie.uni-freiburg.de/biologie/
Publications:
Hoffmeister, D., Dräger, G., Ichinose, K., Rohr, J., Bechthold, A. The C-glycosyltransferase UrdGT2 is unselective towards D- and L-configured nucleotide-bound rhodinoses. (2003). J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 4678-4679.
Hoffmeister, D., Yang, J., Liu, L., Thorson, J.S. (2003). Creation of the First Anomeric D/L-Unspecific Sugar Kinase by Means of Directed Evolution. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 13184-13189.
Hoffmeister, D., Thorson, J. S. (2004). Mechanistic Implications of Escherichia coli Galactokinase Structure-Based Engineering. Chembiochem 5, 989-992.
Bok, J. W., Hoffmeister, D., Maggio-Hall, L., Murillo, R., Glasner, J., Keller, N. P. (2006). Genomic Mining for Aspergillus Natural Products. Chem. Biol. 13, 31-37.
Hoffmeister, D., Keller, N. P. (2007). Natural products of filamentous fungi: enzymes, genes, and their regulation. Nat. Prod. Rep. 24, 393-416.
Misiek, M., Hoffmeister, D. (2007). Fungal genetics, genomics and secondary metabolites in Pharmaceutical Biology. Planta Medica 73, 103-115.
Bouhired, S., Weber, M., Kempf-Sontag, A., Keller, N. P., Hoffmeister, D. (2007). Accurate prediction of the Aspergillus nidulans terrequinone gene cluster boundaries using the transcriptional regulator LaeA. Fungal Genet. Biol., 44 (in press).
Schneider, P., Weber, M., Rosenberger, K., Hoffmeister, D. (2007). A one-pot chemoenzymatic synthesis to the universal precursor for antidiabetes and anti-HIV asterriquinones Chem. Biol. 14 (accepted).
