Navigation auf uzh.ch
Navigation auf uzh.ch
Many antibiotics are natural products, meaning that these molecules are not synthesized in the lab but instead are extracted from microorganisms that produce them in their natural environments. For example, polyketide antibiotics are biosynthesized by many species of soil bacteria and provide a competitive advantage against other microorganisms. The chemical diversity of polyketide molecules is extremely vast. Our aim is to understand how this high diversity of natural products came to be, and to decipher the molecular and evolutionary mechanisms that allow polyketide biosynthesis systems to innovate and produce novel antibiotics. We are also investigating the co-evolution between antibiotic biosynthesis and resistance mechanisms.
