Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Brian Bachmann lab

While many of the most effective antibiotic classes are natural products, many candidate natural product antibiotics have suboptimal drug properties such as human toxicity. Normally in the drug development process chemical modifications are made that seek to fix suboptimal properties, however due to the complexity of natural products, oftentimes chemical modifications are difficult or impossible. Thus, the drug development process ends there. However, these antibiotics are produced by complex biochemical pathways, and the comprising enzymes may be altered to lead to the biosynthesis of an altered antibiotic. My project seeks to improve upon the pharmacological properties of everninomicin class antibiotics through directed evolution of the M. carbonacea everninomicin biosynthetic enzymes.