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SUMMARY:NEW drugs from OLD pathways - Teaching Nature New Tricks - Profess
 or Tom Simpson\, University of Bristol
DTSTART:20190610T150000Z
DTEND:20190610T160000Z
UID:TALK116554@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:53611
DESCRIPTION:Born in Dollar and educated at Alloa Academy\, Tom Simpson gra
 duated (BSc Edinburgh) in 1969 and (PhD Bristol) in 1973. After post-doct
 oral work in Liverpool and Canberra (ANU)\, he was appointed Lecturer in
  Edinburgh in 1978. He moved   to Leicester in 1988\, at the time the youn
 gest Professor of Organic Chemistry in the UK\, and then to Bristol in 19
 90.  He has been awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan and
  Natural Products Chemistry medals and the Tilden\, Simonsen and Hugo Mull
 er lectureships and\, most recently\, the Rita and John Cornforth Award fo
 r interdisciplinary research and the Robert Robinson Lectureship.  He wor
 ks on the chemistry and biosynthesis of biologically important microbial n
 atural products. Elected FRS in 2001\, FRSE in 2006\, and received an Hono
 rary D.Sc. from Edinburgh in 2015.\n\nNEW drugs from OLD pathways - Teachi
 ng Nature New Tricks.\nTom Simpson\, School of Chemistry\, University of B
 ristol\n\nEngineering metabolic pathways in microorganisms can provide new
  antibiotics and other bioactive natural products.\n\nThe mupirocins\, e.g
 . pseudomonic acid A and thiomarinols isolated from Pseudomonas and Pseudo
 alteromonas bacteria are antibiotics active against MRSA. Clinical applica
 tions are restricted by instability in the former and toxicity in the latt
 er. Using classical biosynthetic methods to understand how they are formed
 \, combined with molecular genetic engineering\, novel analogues in which 
 both these limitations are overcome can be produced. Similarly\, the biosy
 nthetic pathway to the fungal metabolite\, tenellin\, isolated from Beauva
 ria bassiana\, has been engineered to produce the “extinct” compound\,
  bassianin\, and many new compounds for biological evaluation.\n
LOCATION:Wolfson Lecture Theatre\, Department of Chemistry\, Lensfield Roa
 d\, University of Cambridge\, CB2 1EW
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