Katherine Ryan

TEACHING

During fall term of the 2025-26 academic year, I will be teaching Chem 413 / 569: Bioorganic Chemistry. Here is the course outline. Please reach out if you have any questions about the course.

RESEARCH

Among the most important drug molecules in use today are organic compounds isolated from organisms such as bacteria, plants, and fungi. These molecules, known as natural products, have an incredible diversity of chemical structures and biological activities. These compounds include well-known antibiotics such as vancomycin and penicillin, and the newest generation of antibacterial agents such as daptomycin. The most important anti-cancer drugs, including taxol, doxorubicin, and vinblastine are also compounds isolated from living organisms. 

My research group seeks to understand how natural products are made. Living organisms synthesize complex molecules without any of the ostensible advantages of an organic chemist, such as access to high temperatures and to solvents. Critical to the assembly of these molecules are enzymes, protein catalysts, that construct these complex natural product molecules from simple and biologically available precursors. Recent technological advances in chemical biology have provided us with the tools to ask fundamental questions about how these molecules are made. For instance, which genes encode the necessary enzymes? What are the underlying mechanisms of these enzymes? Can we re-engineer these enzymes to catalyze the production of derivatives of the original natural products?

My research team is working to isolate new biosynthetic pathways from microbes, to engineer enzymes to catalyze new reactions, and to generate natural product derivatives through combinatorial engineering and chemo-enzymatic synthesis. One of our major tools is macromolecular X-ray crystallography. We crystallize biosynthetic enzymes and determine their three-dimensional structures to provide a structural basis for understanding the catalytic mechanisms of these powerful protein machines. Overall, our research leverages a wide range of tools from chemistry and biology: structural biology, protein engineering, microbial genetics, natural product extraction, enzymology, and genomic analysis.

Current opening:

We are seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral fellow to join the Biosynthetic Enzymes Laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (Website: http://blogs.ubc.ca/ksryan/). Our goal is to elucidate the pathways that lead to natural product molecules. We study enzyme mechanisms, and we are interested in interviewing candidates with a background in protein X-ray crystallography. 

Please send your CV to Katherine Ryan at  .

Our laboratory is located centrally in the vibrant UBC campus, with easy access to the ocean, mountains, and downtown. Vancouver is routinely ranked among the most livable cities in the world.

Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence.  An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged.  We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Metis, Inuit, or Indigenous person.