New Chemical Diversity from Coastal Myxobacteria

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With this award, the Chemistry of Life Processes Program is supporting Professor Phillip Crews in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The focus is on myxobacteria, which represent a unique system for the study of bio-complexity. They spread over a surface by swarming and often out-compete other organisms for nutrients. Fundamental knowledge about their basic physiology including colonization processes, prokaryotic development, genetics, and chemotaxis is emerging but at a rather slow pace. This study aims to increase fundamental knowledge on the myxobacteria taxa obtained from the ocean/land interface, and seeks to uncover new biological systems possessing functional pathways for secondary metabolites. The project invokes a combination of environmental sampling, bioorganic functional chemistry analysis, and microbial taxonomy. Identifying and characterizing unique myxobacterial strains obtained from untapped ecological niches with the capacity to biosynthesize novel chemical scaffolds is the core activity. The Broader Impact of this project involves developing unique research tools and technology to allow discovery and characterization of molecular structures that will be new to science. It is anticipated that unprecedented structural chemical results will be obtained. Thus, the project design will provide opportunities for the Crews team to discover, share, and inspire others. The prospects for training are also important and will accelerate the scientific growth of all project participants anticipated to include young scientific professionals, postdoctoral fellows, PhD candidates, and undergraduate students. Also of note is that the PI is one of the few at UCSC from an underrepresented group. He continues to work diligently to insure that UCSC persists in a strong tradition of leadership to promote the advancement of minorities and women in the fields of bioorganic chemistry and chemical biology.