Tristan de Rond - Tristan de Rond

I run an independent research group and teach in the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

My group studies how nature performs chemistry using enzymes, and how we can harness that understanding to solve real-world problems.

See my profile page here: https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/tristan-de-rond

scroll down to see a list of my publications

My current interests include:

Genomics of biosynthetically "gifted" marine organisms
Metabolic pathway and enzyme discovery
"Biosynthetic methodology"
Biocatalysis
Metabolic engineering
High-throughput analytical chemistry
Laboratory automation
Graduate and undergraduate student mentorship

Tristan's Tips and Tricks

All
Wet Lab Tips and Tricks

Predicting charge / protonation state distribution vs pH with MarvinSketch

What is the protonation state of a given molecule at various pHs? This tool can help you calculate the distributions

07.09.2020

Chemistry software

How to run your experiments in glassware – putting the “vitro” back into “in vitro”

Nowadays, most biology experiments are conducted in plastic labware, however some procedures are better done in glass labware. In this article I discuss why and give some pointers to help you efficiently perform experiments in glass.

05.04.2019

Wet Lab Tips and Tricks

Welcome to Tristan’s Tips and Tricks!

There exists a lot of knowledge in science that is not taught in textbooks or lab classes. You may find nuggets of information deep in footnotes of the SI of a long-forgotten paper in an obscure journal, learn about it from a colleague in grad school, or accidentally invent a more efficient way of doing an experiment. It’s a shame that this kind of information doesn’t get shared more efficiently; It is rarely substantial enough to write a bona fide journal article, but just telling a handful of colleagues doesn’t really help spread the word. Therefore, I have decided to start this blog / article series that I hope will help disseminate some of the tricks of the trade I have stumbled upon.

03.04.2019

Uncategorised

Peer-reviewed publications

If you're unable to access a paper you want to read, please contact me and I can share an electronic copy for personal use.

Burkhardt I, de Rond T, Chen PYT, Moore BS (2022) Ancient plant-like terpene biosynthesis in corals. Nat. Chem. Biol.
- Highlighted in Nature Chemical Biology: "Old path, new frontier"

de Rond T, Asay JE, Moore BS (2021) Co-Occurrence of Enzyme Domains Guides the Discovery of an Oxazolone Synthetase. Nat. Chem. Biol.
(web tool available at http://enzyme-analysis.org, code available at https://github.com/tderond/CO-ED)
- Highlighted by Scripps Institution of Oceanography News: "Mining for Solutions"
- Blog post at Nature Portfolio Chemistry: "What can enzymes teach us about working together?"

Medema M, de Rond T, Moore BS (2021) Mining genomes to illuminate the specialized chemistry of life. Nat Rev Genetics

Garabedian BM, Meadows CW, Mingardon F, Guenther JM, de Rond T, Abourjeily R, Lee TS (2020) An Automated Workflow to Screen Alkene Reductases Using High Throughput Thin Layer Chromatography. Biotechnology for Biofuels.

Eiben, C.B., de Rond, T., Bloszies, C. et al. (2019) Mevalonate Pathway Promiscuity Enables Noncanonical Terpene Production. ACS Synth. Biol.

Valiadi, M., de Rond, T., Amorim, A et al. (2019) Molecular and biochemical basis for the loss of bioluminescence in the dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans along the west coast of the U.S.A. Limnology and Oceanography

de Rond T., Gao J., Zargar A., de Raad M., Cunha J., Northen T.R., Keasling J.D. (2019) A high-throughput mass spectrometric enzyme activity assay enabling the discovery of cytochrome P450 biocatalysts. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl.
- Highlighted by Nature ("A sticky solution could speed up drug discovery", 7 June 2019)

Barajas, J.F., McAndrew, R.P., Thompson, M.G., et.al. (2019) Structural insights into dehydratase substrate selection for the borrelidin and fluvirucin polyketide synthases. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol.

Budin, I., de Rond, T., Chen, Y., Chan, L.J.G., Petzold, C.J., Keasling, J.D., (2018). Viscous control of cellular respiration by membrane lipid composition. Science 362 (Simulation code available at https://github.com/tderond/Budin2018)

Palluk S.*, Arlow D.H.*, de Rond, T., et al. (2017) De novo DNA synthesis using polymerase-tethered nucleotides. Nat. Biotech. 36

Wong J, de Rond T, d’Espaux L, et al., (2018). High-titer production of lathyrane diterpenoids from sugar by engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Metab. Eng. 45.
Curran S., Hagen, A., Poust, S. , Chan L.J.G., Garabedian B.M., de Rond, T. et al. (2018) Probing the Flexibility of an Iterative Modular Polyketide Synthase with Non-Native Substrates in Vitro. ACS Chem Biol.
de Rond, T., Stow, P., Eigl, I., et al. (2017) Oxidative cyclization of prodigiosin by an alkylglycerol monooxygenase-like enzyme. Nat. Chem. Biol. 13

de Raad, M.*, de Rond, T.*, Rübel, O., et al. (2017). OpenMSI Arrayed Analysis Toolkit: Analyzing spatially defined samples using mass spectrometry imaging. Anal. Chem. 89 (code available at https://github.com/biorack/omaat)
Degreif, D., de Rond, T., Bertl, A. Keasling, J.D., and Budin, I. (2017). Lipid engineering reveals regulatory roles for membrane fluidity in yeast flocculation and oxygen-limited growth. Metab. Eng. 41
Hagen, A., Poust, S., de Rond, T., Fortman, J.L., Katz, L., Petzold, C.J., and Keasling, J.D. (2015). Engineering a polyketide synthase for in vitro production of adipic acid. ACS Synth. Biol. 2

Johnson, R.E., de Rond, T., Lindsay, V.N.G., Keasling, J.D., and Sarpong, R. (2015). Synthesis of Cycloprodigiosin Identifies the Natural Isolate as a Scalemic Mixture. Org. Lett. 17
de Rond, T., Danielewicz, M., and Northen, T. (2015). High throughput screening of enzyme activity with mass spectrometry imaging. Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 31

Hagen, A., Poust, S., de Rond, T., Yuzawa, S., Katz, L., Adams, P.D., Petzold, C.J., and Keasling, J.D. (2014). In vitro analysis of carboxyacyl substrate tolerance in the loading and first extension modules of borrelidin polyketide synthase. Biochemistry 53
de Rond, T., Peralta-Yahya, P., Cheng, X., Northen, T.R., and Keasling, J.D. (2013). Versatile synthesis of probes for high-throughput enzyme activity screening. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 405

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