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Genome mining effort discovers 19 new natural products in four years

September 10, 2015

It took two postdoctoral researchers, a lab technician, four undergraduates and their faculty advisors only four years – a blink of an eye in pharmaceutical terms – to scour a collection of 10,000 bacterial strains and isolate the genes responsible for making 19 unique, previously unknown phosphonate natural products, researchers report. Each of these products is a potential new drug. One of them has already been identified as an antibiotic.


September 10, 2015


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Team Discovers How Microbes Build a Powerful Antibiotic

November 6, 2014

Researchers report in the journal Nature that they have made a breakthrough in understanding how a powerful antibiotic agent is made in nature. Their discovery solves a decades-old mystery, and opens up new avenues of research into thousands of similar molecules, many of which are likely to be medically useful.  


November 6, 2014


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Study: Odd biochemistry yields lethal bacterial protein

February 15, 2013

While working out the structure of a cell-killing protein produced by some strains of the bacterium Enterococcus faecalis, researchers stumbled on a bit of unusual biochemistry. They found that a single enzyme helps form distinctly different, three-dimensional ring structures in the protein, one of which had never been observed before.


February 15, 2013


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Study identifies prime source of ocean methane

August 31, 2012

Up to 4 percent of the methane on Earth comes from the ocean’s oxygen-rich waters, but scientists have been unable to identify the source of this potent greenhouse gas. Now researchers report that they have found the culprit: a bit of “weird chemistry” practiced by the most abundant microbes on the planet.

The findings appear in the journal Science.


August 31, 2012


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New antibiotic could make food safer and cows healthier

March 29, 2012

Food-borne diseases might soon have another warrior to contend with, thanks to a new molecule discovered by chemists at the University of Illinois. The new antibiotic, an analog of the widely used food preservative nisin, also has potential to be a boon to the dairy industry as a treatment for bovine mastitis.


March 29, 2012


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Two IGB Faculty Members Elected to American Academy of Microbiology

April 22, 2011

James Slauch and Wilfred van der Donk  have been elected fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology. They are among the 78 microbiologists chosen by their peers for significant contributions to their field.

Slauch, a professor of microbiology and of medicine, studies Salmonella bacteria, particularly the molecular mechanisms that cause Salmonella infections and allow the bacteria to elude the immune system.


April 22, 2011


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