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Professor Eric Schmidt, University of Utah
Friday,
Nov.
3, 2006 Tapping Environmental Genetic Diversity to Synthesize New Natural Products
Abstract: Genetic approaches provide promising routes to natural products with medicinal value. For example, engineering of biosynthetic pathway genes potentially allows rational genetic synthesis of new compounds. A limitation is that biosynthetic pathways are very complex, so “rational” engineering remains largely empirical. Marine invertebrates and their symbiotic bacteria often contain evolutionarily related natural products, indicating that these organisms could inform pathway engineering. As a model system, we have been studying the symbiosis between Prochloron bacteria and their animal hosts. Prochloron synthesis a large number of related, highly modified peptides via a ribosomal pathway. By studying the genetic relationships between these pathways in 46 animals from the tropical Pacific, we found unique evolutionary rules. These rules were applied to the genetic synthesis of a new compound by rational engineering and to genome mining for the discovery of new natural products.
BS Chemistry 1994 UC San Diego PhD Oceanography 1999 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Mentor: D. John Faulkner Postdoctoral fellow 1999-2001 Department of Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University. Mentor: Craig A. Townsend 2001-current: Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Adjunct Asst. Prof. of Biology, University of Utah |
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