Directing Biosynthesis V

Eric Brown is a Professor at McMaster University in Canada.  He is interested in the complex biology that underlies bacterial survival strategies. His team uses tools of genetics, bacterial physiology and chemical biology to understand and subvert these systems where the ultimate goal is to provide fresh directions for new antibiotics.

Dr. Chappell joined the University of Kentucky in 1985 with current responsibilities to lead a discovery research program, as well as provide leadership for the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department in the College of Pharmacy.  He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, followed by postdoctoral training in Germany.

Deng Zixin, Professor of Microbiology and Chemical Biology，the current President of Chinese Society of Microbiology. He is a Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences (formally the Third World Academy of Sciences, TWAS), and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He was born in Hubei Province, China in 1957. He received his Bs degree on microbiology from Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China, in 1982, and a PhD degree on microbial genetics from the University of East Anglia, UK, in 1987, while working in Streptomyces group at John Innes Centre. Major interest is on Streptomyces genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology of antibiotic biosynthesis, and DNA backbone modification by sulfur (phosphorothiolation). He now acts as associate editor for ACS Chemical Biology, and as member of editorial boards for a number of journals including Cell Chemical Biology, Applied & Environmental Microbiology (ASM).

Prof. Changjiang Dong obtained his Ph.D in Chemical Biology and Protein Crystallography at University of St. Andrews at Prof. James Naismith group in 2003, whilst started his postdoctoral researches in group. He was promoted to a senior postdoctoral researcher in 2005, and was appointed as an EASTCHEM fellow in 2007 at St. Andrews. In 2008, he obtained the Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship to start his own research group at University of St. Andrews. His research areas are in emerging viruses and multi-drug resistant bacteria. In 2012, Prof. Dong took a chair position as Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Norwich Medical School at University of East Anglia. In 2014, he was awarded Wellcome Trust Investigator Award to study Gram-negative bacteria outer membrane biogenesis and assembly. In 2015, He won the Times Higher Education Research Project of Year.

Olga Genilloud is Scientific Director at Fundación MEDINA and Head of the Microbiology department. She has a PhD in Chemistry (Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics) from the Universidad Complutense  and has worked in the production and biosynthesis of bacterial secondary metabolites in the academia (Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid; Harvard Medical School, Boston) and more than 19 years in industrial drug discovery (Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Labs Spain).
Her main research interests are focused on the production of novel microbial natural products, the exploration of novel microbial diversity to deliver novel chemistry, and the development of molecular and chemical tools to support natural products drug discovery.

Ian is Head of the Department of Biology (www.york.ac.uk/biology) and holds the Weston Chair of Biochemical Genetics at the University of York. His research team is based in the Biology Department’s Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (www.cnap.org.uk). During his career Ian has made major contributions to our understanding of plant metabolism and seed biology. Transformative research published in high impact journals has shed new light on the production of small molecule natural products from plants such as the anti-cancer compound noscapine, morphinan-based analgesics such as codeine and morphine and the antimalarial drug artemisinin. He led the way in the genetic dissection of lipid mobilization in Arabidopsis oilseeds and most recently has discovered a role for oxylipins in controlling seed germination. Ian also leads the BBSRC funded High Value Chemicals from Plants Network in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy (hvcfp.net). Funding for Ian’s research comes from a range of sources including industry, UK Government including BBSRC, EU, UK and overseas charities.
In 2016 Ian was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and as a new European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) Member. He has also been awarded the Biochemical Society’s 2017 Heatley Medal and Prize.

Andrew Gulick is a Principal Research Scientist at the Hauptman-Woodward Institute. His research uses enzymology, chemical biology, and structural biology to explore natural product biosynthesis. His lab is also interested in the design and characterization of inhibitors of the enzymes involved in bacterial virulence factor production.

Tomohisa Kuzuyama completed his PhD under supervision of Professor Haruo Seto at University of Tokyo (UTokyo) in 1995. Later, he was appointed Assistant Professor at IMCB, UTokyo, where he began to study the MEP pathway for terpenoid biosynthesis. He is currently Associate Professor of BRC, UTokyo. His current research interests aim at understanding biosynthesis of diverse natural products.

Andreas Peschel studied Biology in Bochum and Tübingen, Germany, and obtained Diploma and PhD degrees in Microbiology. He held postdoctoral positions in the labs of Friedrich Götz in Tübingen and of Jos van Strijp in Utrecht (The Netherlands) focusing on Staphylococcus aureus cell wall and host/pathogen interaction. After a period as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Biology he accepted a call to the Medical Microbiology and Hygiene Department as a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Microbiology in Tübingen. His lab studies staphylococcal colonization, infection, and immune evasion mechanisms.



 

Joern Piel is a Professor at at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, studying natural product biosynthesis in bacteria at the chemical, enzymatic, and genetic level. Research focus of his lab is the metabolism of uncultivated and symbiotic bacteria, the investigation and utilization of new biosynthetic enzymology, and genome-based methods of natural product discovery.

Esther Schmitt is Head of the microbiology group in the Natural Products Unit of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Basel. The expertise in induction of secondary metabolism, synthetic biology and biosynthetic pathways is used to discover novel natural products and to support pre-clinical research projects in anti-infectives, immunology, metabolism and oncology.



 

Tanja Schneider studied biology and obtained her P.h.D in 2004, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Bonn, Germany and Novozymes A/S, Denmark. In 2015 she was appointed Professor of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the University Bonn. Her main research focus is on the biosynthesis of the bacterial cell envelope as a target for novel antibiotics.

Janet Smith studies the structure and function of natural product biosynthetic pathways and the activity and selectivity of enzymes that catalyze unusual biosynthetic reactions.  She is Margaret J. Hunter Collegiate Professor in the Life Sciences and Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan, and Scientific Director of GM/CA@APS, a macromolecular crystallography facility at the Argonne synchrotron.

Craig Townsend was born in Chicago and was an undergraduate at Williams College. After receiving his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Yale, he held an International Exchange Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich and joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 1976 where he is currently the Alsoph H. Corwin Professor of Organic Chemistry.




 

Wilfred van der Donk was born in the Netherlands and received his B.S. and M.S. at Leiden University. He obtained his Ph.D. at Rice University, and after postdoctoral work at MIT with JoAnne Stubbe, joined the University of Illinois in 1997. Since 2008, he is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

John Vederas received his B.Sc. in Chemistry at Stanford University and obtained his Ph.D. at M.I.T. in organic synthesis with the late George Büchi. Postdoctoral studies with Christoph Tamm (Basel) and Heinz Floss (Purdue) led to a continuing interest in biosynthesis and enzyme mechanisms, especially for fungal polyketides and bioactive peptides.