| Affiliations: | Genetics & Genomics Research Leadership |
| Project Leader: | Sandra LaBonte sandyl_27@tamu.edu Biochemistry and Biophysics |
| Faculty Mentor: | Paul Straight, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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TBA |
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Team Size:
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3
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| Open Spots: | 3 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Team Needs:
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Description:
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Antibiotic resistance is a growing issue across the world. Bacterial infections are constantly occurring and bacteria are adapting to our methods of treatment. They are learning to combat the current antibiotics we have leaving us without ways of treating patients. One way to solve this issue is to discover new antibiotics. The current methods of discovering new antibiotics are antiquated and haven’t led to any new discoveries in quite some time. Our lab has developed a new method to discover new antibiotics by taking advantage of the natural function of antibiotics which is a bacteria defense system used by Streptomyces. Our lab uses the interaction between several species of Streptomyces and Bacillus subtilis to induce the production of antibiotics by Streptomyces. Upon exposure to an antibiotic produced by Streptomyces, B. subtilis induces motility to move away from the antibiotic. One particular species of interest is Streptomyces Mg1 which induces the sliding motility in B. subtilis. The S. Mg1 genome encodes several candidate inducers and produces more than one. We identified a biosynthetic gene cluster for chalcomycin, a macrolide similar to erythromycin. Our lab purified chalcomycin A and discovered that the pure metabolite induced motility of B. subtilis. However, upon deletion of the chalcomycin gene cluster Mg1 was still able to produce a significant sliding phenotype, indicating the production of a second inducer compound . Chalcomycin A is the only antibiotic known to be produced by S. Mg1, raising the possibility of a new chemical form and potentially a new form of antibiotic. Our goal is to identify and study the other metabolites which induce sliding motility |