Dr. Katrin Franke

• Isolation and structure elucidation of natural products
• Bioactive plant secondary metabolites
• Metabolomic approaches
• Correlation of chemical and biological diversity

Presently I am involved in the Flexpool project “Plant Meta-Metabolomics – Development of an Unbiased Survey of Habitat-Dependent Metabolic Diversity (Met-Total)”.

Plant secondary metabolites play important roles in (intra- and interspecies) communication, co-existence, community assembly and plant diversity. However, there are still many unanswered questions about the most abundant plant secondary metabolites, habitat specific metabolite groups and their function, and correlation between chemo- and biodiversity. Therefore, this project aims to explore methods that allow a complete chemical survey of a complex plant community. Two climatically contrasting habitats were selected to tackle the topic. In a pilot study the plant community metabolome of a wet mesophilic evergreen broadleaf forest and a dry microphyll forest of a mountain region in Cuba will be compared.

Katrin Franke (0000-0003-3043-3571) (orcid.org)

iDiv publications:

Chalo, D.M., Franke, K., Nchiozem-Ngnitedem, V.-A., Kakudidi, E., Origa-Oryem, H., Namukobe, J., Kloss, F., Yenesew, A., Wessjohann, L.A. (2023) Prenylated isoflavanones with antimicrobial potential from the root bark of Dalbergia melanoxylon. Metabolites 2023, 13, 678; DOI: 10.3390/metabo13060678

Kappen, J., Manurung, J., Fuchs, T., Vemulapalli, S.P.B., Schmitz, L.M., Frolov, A., Agusta A., Muellner-Riehl, A.N., Griesinger, C., Franke, K., Wessjohann, L.A. (2023) Challenging structure elucidation of lumnitzeralactone, an ellagic acid derivative from the mangrove Lumnitzera racemosa. Marine Drugs, 2023, 21, 242; DOI: 10.3390/md21040242

Ware, I., Franke, K., Dube, M., El Enshasy, H.A., Wessjohann, L.A. (2023) Characterization and bioactive potential of secondary metabolites isolated from Piper sarmentosum Roxb. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2023, 24, 1328; DOI: 10.3390/ijms24021328

Holzmeyer, L., Hartig, A.-K., Franke, K., Brandt, W., Muellner-Riehl, A.N., Wessjohann, L.A., Schnitzler, J. (2020) Evaluation of plant sources for antiinfective lead compound discovery by correlating phylogenetic, spatial, and bioactivity data. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (22) 12444-12451, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915277117