Title: Natural Product Antibiotics: Past, Present, Future

Abstract: 

Microbial natural products have served as a dominant source of antibiotics and comprise some of our most celebrated cures. Until the turn of the century, they were identified via tedious 'grind-and-find' approaches, which increasingly resulted in the re-isolation of known compounds. More recently, the availability of microbial genome sequences has ushered in a renaissance in natural product research and significantly impacted discovery approaches. In this talk, I will present new methodologies that my group has developed to locate otherwise hidden or 'cryptic' natural products, notably antibiotics, from diverse bacteria and to explore their therapeutic utility, mechanism of action, and ecological relevance. Our results provide deeper insights into microbial metabolism with implications for drug discovery and antibiotic research.            

Bio:

Mohammad R. Seyedsayamdost is Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology at Princeton University. He obtained a combined B.S./M.S. degree in Biochemistry from Brandeis University, completing his thesis research with Prof. Liz Hedstrom. He then conducted graduate research under the guidance of Prof. JoAnne Stubbe and received a Ph.D. in chemistry from MIT. After postdoctoral training with Prof. Jon Clardy and Prof. Roberto Kolter at Harvard Medical School, he started his independent career at Princeton. Prof. Seyedsayamdost's lab is broadly interested in natural product discovery, function, and biosynthesis, and his research has been recognized by a number of awards, most recently with the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.