Lecture 'Meet the PhD Jury - Unlocking Nature’s Pharmacy: Genomic Approaches to Discover Antibacterial and Anticancer Peptides'
- For whom
- Employees , Students
- When
- 12-12-2024 from 01:00 to 02:30
- Where
- Campus Coupure, Building A, Auditorium A4, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Gent
- Language
- English
- Organizer
- Department of Biotechnology - Faculty of Bioscience Engineering
- Contact
- maarten.demol@ugent.be
Lecture given by Dr. Andrew Truman of the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK) on the discovery of antibacterial and anticancer peptides from genomic data.
Natural products (NPs) are small molecules that are made across all kingdoms of life. They provide producing organisms with beneficial traits, such as intra-species communication, nutrient acquisition, or growth inhibition of competing organisms. The potent bioactivity of these molecules means that many are used in medicine and agriculture.
This talk will focus on using genomic data to guide the discovery of novel peptide-derived NPs, which can be made via ribosomal or non-ribosomal routes. The biological activity and biosynthesis of these antibacterial and anticancer molecules will also be discussed.
Andrew Truman is a Group Leader in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK). He obtained an MSci in Chemistry from Imperial College London and a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He joined the John Innes Centre in 2013 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow to establish his research group.