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

天然产物通常是由植物和微生物产生的分子，已广泛用于制药和其他应用。通常，这些自然提供的分子不具备作为治疗剂使用所需的特性，需要进一步的多步骤合成（化学）转化来产生最终的优化药物分子。在这个项目中，我们正在开发新的酶，可以引入宿主微生物，在单步发酵过程中产生优化的药物分子。这样的过程将避免任何额外的合成转化的需要，这将减少典型的化学过程造成的环境破坏。此外，单步发酵过程将比现有的合成过程更具成本效益，这将使基本药物的供应更便宜。

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.