Chemistry Seminar - "Waking-up silent bacterial genes for natural product discovery"

Chemistry Seminar - "Waking-up silent bacterial genes for natural product discovery"
-

This is a past event

Mining bacterial genomes has revealed a vast number of gene clusters proposed to direct the biosynthesis of novel specialized natural products. However, many of these gene clusters remain silent, or are poorly expressed, in laboratory growth conditions.

Christophe Corre works at the University of Warwick and will tell us about activiting silent genes.

Mining bacterial genomes has revealed a vast number of gene clusters proposed to direct the biosynthesis of novel specialized natural products. However, many of these gene clusters remain silent, or are poorly expressed, in laboratory growth conditions.

 Our research group is particularly interested in investigating the molecular mechanisms by which pathway-specific transcriptional regulators control the expression of silent and cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters. 

By exploiting our structural and functional understanding of specific classes of transcriptional regulators, we have successfully uncovered novel families of natural products and, subsequently, novel biocatalysts.

 This presentation will first introduce some of the fundamental work we have carried out before discussing the specific strategies we have used to access the metabolic products of silent biosynthetic gene clusters.

Speaker
Christophe Corre
Hosted by
Hai Deng
Venue
Meston Lecture Theatre 6