A Synthetic Biology Approach for the Total Biosynthesis of Semi-Synthetic Antibiotics

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Natural products are molecules typically produced by plants and microorganisms that have been widely exploited for pharmaceutical and other applications. Often, these molecules nature provides do not have the required properties for use as therapeutic agents and further multi-step synthetic (chemical) transformations are required to produce a final optimised drug molecule. In this project, we are developing new enzymes which can be introduced into a host microorganism to produce the optimised drug molecule in a single-step fermentation process. Such a process will obviate the need for any additional synthetic transformations, which will reduce the environmental damage caused by typical chemical processes. Moreover, a single-step fermentation process will be more cost-effective, than existing synthetic processes, which will enable the cheaper provision of essential medicines.