Research

Bacteria and fungi are remarkable chemists, and among their chemical creations are many of the antibiotics now indispensable to human medicine. We study antibiotics and other molecules from microbes through the lens of defensive symbioses: ecological partnerships in which a host animal is protected by antibiotics or other molecular defenses produced by symbiotic microbes. With a focus on insect-microbe symbioses, we aim to:

• discover novel antibiotics and other bioactive compounds
• understand the roles these molecules play in nature
• understand how microbes evolve and disseminate new chemical structures

To understand the chemical and genetic basis of these molecular defenses, projects draw on fieldwork, microbiology, modern bioinformatics techniques, and classic natural products chemistry methods for purification and structural characterization of active molecules.

Our research is driven by undergraduate students. Claremont Colleges students interested in research opportunities in the lab should email Ethan for more information.