Prior to joining Ferrier as a postdoctoral fellow, Dr Luke Stevenson was a PhD student in Victoria University of Wellington's School of Biological Sciences, looking at the biosynthetic gene clusters soil bacteria use to produce interesting compounds that could be useful as antibiotics or anticancer agents.

"I have worked on natural product biosynthesis in uncultured environmental bacteria. That work gave me a range of experiences in molecular biology, bioinformatics, fermentation and natural product isolation.
"I think the potential for gene driven natural product research is exciting, both from a discovery and production view."

Now based in Professor Emily Parker's lab, Luke is working on projects using synthetic biology principles for reconstitution of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters in different microbial hosts.

"The team at Ferrier are great to work with and the combination of academic research and the commercial focus is interesting. I’m excited to learn some new synthetic biology processes and contribute to the institute's research."