Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences

Natural Product Chemistry, Biosynthesis, Drug Discovery, Integrated Omics, Neuroscience

NEAvalon Lab

2021 - 2024: NIH NRSA F32 Postdoctoral Fellow, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego

Deleray, V; Dorrestein, PC; Avalon, NE.* “Molecules to medicine: advances in metabolomics for natural product drug discovery.” Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 2025 Oct 31. DOI: 10.1016/j.copbio.2025.103373

Rutz, A; Probst, D; Agular, C; Akiyama, DY; Alberti, F; Augustijn, HE; Avalon, NE; Beemelmanns, C; Barbieri, HB; Biermann, F; Bridge, AJ; Giron, EC; Cox, R; Crusemann, M; D’Agostino, PM; Feuermann, M; Gerke, J; Garcia, Karina; Holme, J; Hwang, J; Iacovelli, R; Barbosa, JCJ; Kaur, N; Klapper, M; Kohler, AM; Korenskaia, A; Kubach, No; Lee, BT; Loureiro, C; Mantri, S; Narula, S; Meijer, D; Navvarro-Munos, JC; Nguyen, G; Paliyal, S; Panghal, M; Rao, L; Sieber, S; Sokolova, N; Sowa, ST; Szenei, J; Terlouw, B; Weddeling, HG; Yu, Jingwei; Ziemert, N; Weber, T; Blin, K; van der Hooft, JJJ; Medema, MH, Zdouc, MM. “MITE: the Minimum Information about a Tailoring Enzyme database for capturing specialized metabolite biosynthesis” Nucleic Acids Research 2026 Sept 26. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkaf969; PMID: 41001881

Ryu, B; Avalon, NE; Cuau, M; Almaliti, J; Din, MO; Brennan, C; Glukhov, E; Knight, R; Gerwick, L; Gerwick, WH. “Cyanobacteria Join the Kahalalide Conversation: Genome and Metabolite Evidence for Structurally Related Peptides.” Journal of the American Chemical Society 2025 147 (35), 31800-31810. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5c08818 PMCID: PMC12449831

Philmus, B; Avalon, NE; Ding, Y; Doering, DT; Eustaquio, AS; Gerwick, WH; Luesch, H; Orjala, J; Sutherland, S; Taton, A; Udwary, D. “Green genes from blue greens: challenges and solutions to unlocking the potential of cyanobacteria in drug discovery.” Natural Product Reports. 2025. DOI: 10.1039/d5np00016e; PMID: 40663385

El Abiead, Y; Strobel, M; Payne, T; Fahy, E; O’Donovan, C; Subramamiam, S; Vizcaino, JA; Zuffa, S; Xing, S; Mannochio-Russo, H; Mohanty, I; Zhao, HN; Caraballo-Rodriguez, AM; Gomes, PWP; Avalon, NE; Dorrestein, PC; Wang, M. “Enabling pan-repository reanalysis for big data science of public metabolomics data.” Nature Communications 16, 4838. 24 May 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-60067-y; PMCID: PMC12103507

Alexander, KL; Naman, CB; Iwasaki, A; Leao, T; Reher, R; Petras, D; Kim, H; Ternon, E; Caro-Diaz, E; Glukhov, E; Mitrevska, JA; Avalon, NE; Duggan, B; Gerwick, L; Gerwick, WH; “Fatuamide A, a Hybrid PKS/NRPS Metallophore from an American Samoan Cyanobacterium Leptolyngbya sp.” Journal of Natural Products. 29 January 2025. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.4c01051; PMID: 39879528

Zdouc, MM; Blin, K; +288 authors including Avalon, NE. “MIBiG 4.0: Advancing Biosynthetic Gene Cluster Curation through Global Collaboration.” Nucleic Acids Research, 53(D1), d678-d690. 6 January 2025. DOI:10.1093/nar/gkae1115; PMCID: PMC11701617

Avalon, NE;+ Reis, MA;+ Thornburg, CC;+ Williamson, RT; Petras, D; Aron, AT; Al-Hindy, M; Mitrevska, J; Ferreira, L; Morais, J; El Abiead, Y; Glukhov, E; Alexander, KL; Vulpanovici, FA; Bertin, MJ; Whitner, S; Choi, H; Spengler, G; Blinov, K; Kew, WR; Pasa-Tolic, L; Dorrestein, PC; Vasconcelos, V; Gerwick, L; McPhail, KL; Gerwick; WH. “Leptochelins A-C, cytotoxic metallophores produced by geographically dispersed Leptothoe sp. marine cyanobacteria.” Journal of the American Chemical Society. 25 June 2024. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c05399; PMCID: PMC11240249 (+co-first authors; equally contributed to the work.)

Ryu, B; Glukhov, E; Teixeira, TR; Caffrey, CR; Madiyan, S; Joseph, V; Avalon, NE; Leber, CA; Naman CB; Gerwick, WH. “The Kavaratamides: Discovery of Linear Lipodepsipeptides from the Marine Cyanobacterium Moorena bouillonii using a Comparative Chemogeographic Analysis.” Journal of Natural Products. 4 June 2024. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.4c00242; PMCID: PMC11217931.

Ngo, T-E; Ecker, A; Guild, A; Remmel, A; Boudreau, P; Alexander, KL; Naman, B; Glukhov, E; Avalon, NE; Shende, VV; Gerwick, L; Gerwick WH. “Structure and Biosynthesis of Hectoramide B, an Upregulated Linear Depsipeptide from the Marine Cyanbacterium Moorena producens JHB,” ACS Chemical Biology. 8 February 2024. DOI: doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.3c00391. PMID: 38330248.

Zuffa, S; Schmid, R; Bauermeister, A; Gomes, PWP; Caraballo-Rodriguez, AM; El Abiead, Y; Aron, AT; Gentry, EC; Zemlin, J; Meehan, MJ; Avalon, NE; +92 authors. “MicrobeMASST: A Taxonomically-informed Mass Spectrometry Search Tool for Microbial Metabolomics Data,” Nature Microbiology. 5 February 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01575-9. PMCID: 38316926.

Bittremieux, W; Avalon, NE; Thomas, SP; Kakhkhorov, SA; Aksenov, AA; Gomes, PWP; Aceves, CM Andrés; Caraballo Rodríguez, M; Gauglitz, JM; Gerwick, WH; Jarmusch, AK; Kaddurah-Daouk, RF; Kang, KB; Kim, HW; Kondic, T; Mannochio-Russo, H; Meehan, MJ; Melnik, AV; Nothias, L; O’Donovan, C; Panitchpakdi, M; Petras, D; Schmid, R; Schymanski, EL; van der Hooft, JJJ; Weldon, KC; Yang, H; Zemlin, J; Wang, M; Dorrestein, PC. “Open Access Repository-Scale Propagated Nearest Neighbor Suspect Spectral Library for Untargeted Metabolomics,” Nature Communications. 20 December 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-44035-y.

Lukowski, A; Hubert, F; Ngo, TE; Avalon, NE; Gerwick, WH; Moore, BS. “Enzymatic Halogenation of Terminal Alkynes.” Journal of the American Chemical Society. 18 August 2023, 145, 34, 18716–18721. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c05750, PMCID: PMC10486310.

Avalon, NE; Gerwick, WH. “Plant Sources of Drugs and Chemicals.” Reference Module in Life Sciences, Elsevier, 2023. ISBN 9780128096338, DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-822562-2.00107-9.

Terlouw, BR; Blin, K; Navarro-Muñoz, JC; Avalon, NE; Chevrette, MG; Egbert, S; Lee, S; Meijer, D; Recchia, MJJ; Reitz, ZL; van Santen, JA; Selem-Mojica, N; Tørring, T; Zaroubi, L; Alanjary, M; Aleti, G; Aguilar, C; Al-Salihi, SAA; Augustijn, HE; Avelar-Rivas, JA; Avitia-Domínguez, LA; Barona-Gómez, F; Bernaldo-Agüero, J; Bielinski, VA; Biermann, F; Booth, TJ; Carrion Bravo, VJ; Castelo-Branco, R; Chagas, FO; Cruz-Morales, P; Du, C; Duncan, KR; Gavriilidou, A; Gayrard, D; Gutiérrez-García, K; Haslinger, K; Helfrich, EJN; van der Hooft, JJJ; Jati, AP; Kalkreuter, E; Kalyvas, N; Kang, KB; Kautsar, S; Kim, W; Kunjapur, AM; Li, YX; Lin, GM; Loureiro, C; Louwen, JJR; Louwen, NLL; Lund, G; Parra, J; Philmus, B; Pourmohsenin, B; Pronk, LJU; Rego, A; Rex, DAB; Robinson, S; Rosas-Becerra, LR; Roxborough, ET; Schorn, MA; Scobie, DJ; Singh, KS; Sokolova, N; Tang, X; Udwary, D; Vigneshwari, A; Vind, K; Vromans, SPJM; Waschulin, V; Williams, SE; Winter, JM; Witte, TE; Xie, H; Yang, D; Yu, J; Zdouc, M; Zhong, Z; Collemare, J; Linington, RG; Weber, T; Medema, MH. “MIBiG 3.0: a community-driven effort to annotate experimentally validated biosynthetic gene clusters.” Nucleic Acids Research. 6 January 2023 18:gkac1049. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkac1049. PMCID: PMC9825592.

Welsch, JT.; Smalley, TB; Matlack, JK; Avalon, NE; Binning, JM; Johnson, MP; Allcock, AL; Baker, BJ. Tuaimenals B-H, Cytotoxic Meroterpenes from the Irish Deep-Sea Soft Coral Duva florida with Bioactivity Against Cervical Cancer. Journal of Natural Products. 29 December 2022, 86, 1, 182-190. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.2c00898. PMCID: PMC9887596.

Avalon, NE*; Murray AE; Baker, BJ*. “Integrated metabolomic-genomic workflows accelerate microbial natural product discovery.” Analytical Chemistry, 6 September 2022. DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.2c02245; PMCID: PMC9453739 (*co-corresponding authors).

Avalon, NE; Nafie, J; De Marco Verissimo, C; Warrensford, LC; Dietrick, SG; Pittman, AR; Young, RM; Kearns, FL; Smalley, T; Binning, JM; Dalton, JP; Johnson, MP; Woodcock, HL; Allcock, AL; Baker, BJ. “Tuaimenal A, a meroterpene from the Irish Deep-Sea Soft Coral Duva florida, displays inhibition of the SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro enzyme.” Journal of Natural Products, 27 May 2022. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.2c00054; PMCID: PMC9127705

Avalon, NE; Murray, AE Daligault, HE; Lo, C; Davenport, KW; Dichosa, AEK; Chain, PSG; Baker, BJ. “Bioinformatic and mechanistic analysis of the palmerolide PKS-NRPS biosynthetic pathway from the microbiome of an Antarctic ascidian.” Frontiers in Chemistry, 24 December 2021. DOI: 10.3389/fchem.2021.802574; PMCID: PMC8739492

Murray, AE; Lo, C; Daligault, HE; Avalon, NE; Read, R; Davenport, KW; Higham, ML; Kunde, Y; Dichosa, AEK; Baker, BJ; Chain, PSG. “Discovery of an Antarctic ascidian-associated uncultivated Verrucomicrobia with antimelanoma palmerolide biosynthetic potential.” mSphere, 1 December 2021. DOI: 10.1128/mSphere.00759-21; PMCID: PMC8636102

Kokkaliari, S;+ Avalon, NE;+ Herrera, K; Young, R; Yang, B; Welsh, J; Deitrich, S; Baker, B.J. “Marine Natural Products with Bioactivity Against Neglected Tropical Diseases.” Marine Natural Products. H. Kiyota (ed.), Springer Berlin Heidelberg: Berlin, Heidelberg, 12 May 2021. ISBN978-981-16-4636-2; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/7081_2021_56. (+co-first authors; equally contributed to the work.)

Murray, AE; Avalon, NE; Bishop, L; Davenport, K; Delage, E; Dichosa, AEK; Eveillard, D; Higham, M; Kokkaliari, S; Lo, C; Risenfield, C; Young, R; Chain, PSG; Baker, BJ. “Uncovering the core microbiome and distributions of palmerolide in Synoicum adareanum across the Anvers Island archipelago, Antarctica.” Marine Drugs, 2 June 2020, 18 (6), 298. DOI: 10.3390/md18060298; PMCID: PMC7345734

Burrell C, Avalon NE, Siegel J, Pizzi M, Dutta T, Charlesworth MC, Freeman WD. “Precision medicine of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, vasospasm and delayed cerebral ischemia.” Expert Reviews in Neurotherapeutics. 11 November 2016; 16(11): 1251-1262. DOI: 10.1080/14737175.2016.1203257; PMCID: PMC5573230

Carrigan W.V. 3rd, Barrett K, Freeman W.D., Avalon NE. “Multimodal CT to differentiate acute ischemic stroke from stroke mimics.” Neurohospitalist. 2 April 2012(2):60-1. DOI: 10.1177/1941874412439582; PubMed PMID: 23983864.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego 2021—2024

Physician Assistant
Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville 2010—2016

Robert A. Mah Molecular Innovation Center

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=7306

Last updated
11/15/2025