Rate My Professor Leanne Pearson

Dr. Leanne Pearson serves as a Senior Research Associate, Lecturer, and Casual Academic in the School of Science at the University of Newcastle, Australia, within the College of Engineering, Science and Environment. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. Previously, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales from 2008 to 2016. Her research centers on environmental microbiology, water quality, and natural products research, particularly the biosynthesis of toxin tailoring and transport enzymes in cyanobacteria, known as blue-green algae. Pearson explores biotoxins and natural products such as biosunscreens, antibiotics, and neuroactive compounds, investigating their production mechanisms and environmental impacts. Utilizing synthetic biology, she mines microbial genomes for biosynthesis gene clusters, characterizes pathways, and manipulates them in heterologous organisms like Escherichia coli. Her fields of research include microbial genetics (50%), synthetic biology (25%), and natural products and bioactive compounds (25%). She is a member of the Brett Neilan Laboratory of Microbial and Molecular Diversity and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology.

Pearson has published extensively on cyanobacterial toxins and microbial natural products, with key works including 'The genetics, biosynthesis and regulation of toxic specialized metabolites of cyanobacteria' (Harmful Algae, 2016), 'On the Chemistry, Toxicology and Genetics of the Cyanobacterial Toxins, Microcystin, Nodularin, Saxitoxin and Cylindrospermopsin' (Marine Drugs, 2010), 'Cyanobacteria as a critical reservoir of the environmental antimicrobial resistome' (Environmental Microbiology, 2023), 'Heterologous Expression and Biochemical Analysis Reveal a Schizokinen-Based Siderophore Pathway in Leptolyngbya (Cyanobacteria)' (Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2022), and 'Structure, biosynthesis and activity of indolactam alkaloids' (2024). Her scholarship has garnered over 3,145 citations, influencing studies on cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms, toxin gene regulation, and biotechnological applications of microbial metabolites. She contributes to PhD supervision and course delivery, including SCIE2019.