Research

I develop sustainable strategies to produce, recover, and valorize bioactive and value-added compounds from plant-based materials and microbial systems, aiming to enhance ingredient functionality and support circular bioeconomy goals. My work includes eco-friendly extraction methods—such as ultrasound-assisted and subcritical water extraction—for upcycling agri-food by-products, as well as metabolomics-driven approaches to study microbial bioprocessing. Together, these efforts contribute to the development of resource-efficient, health-promoting ingredients from diverse biological sources.

References

• Guan X, Erşan S, Xie Y, Park JO, Liu C. 2024. Redox and energy homeostasis enabled by photocatalytic material-microbial interfaces. ACS Nano 18, 20567–20575. Link
• Xie Y, Erşan S, Guan X, Wang J, Sha J, Xu S, Wohlschlegel J. A, Park JO, Liu C. 2023. Unexpected metabolic rewiring of CO₂ fixation in H₂-mediated materials-biology hybrids. PNAS 120, e2308373120. Link
• Guan X, Erşan S, Hu X, Atallah TL, Xie Y, Lu S, Cao B, Sun J, Wu K, Huang Y, Duan Y, Caram JR, Park JO, Liu C. 2022. Maximizing light-driven CO₂ and N₂ fixations in biology-material hybrids. Nature Catalysis 5, 1019–1029. Link
• Erşan S, Guclu-Ustundag Ö, Carle R, Schweiggert R. 2018. Subcritical water extraction of phenolic and antioxidant constituents from pistachio hull. Food Chem 253, 46–54. Link
• Erşan S, Guclu-Ustundag Ö, Carle R, Schweiggert R. 2017. Determination of pistachio hull phenolics by HPLC-DAD-ESI/MSⁿ. J. Food Compos. Anal. 62, 103–114. Link
• Guclu-Ustundag O, Erşan S, Özcan E, Özan G, Kayra N, Ekinci FY. 2016. Black tea processing waste as a source of antioxidant and antimicrobial phenolic compounds. Eur. Food Res. Technol. 242, 1523–1532. Link