Nicole Kim Rose Hills
Investigating Antimicrobial Production by Streptomyces sp. str. E1
Many antibiotics used today are natural products of bacterial secondary metabolism, and Streptomyces spp. in particular have been found to produce many small molecules with medically significant antimicrobial properties. Due to rising concerns of antibiotic resistance and stagnating antimicrobial discovery, isolates from understudied microbial communities such as post-fire soils may provide new species with undiscovered metabolic pathways, including for novel antimicrobial molecules. Streptomyces strain E1 is one such isolate, which has been shown to have antibiotic activity against Pyronema omphalodes, among other microbial species. My project seeks to identify the chemical structure of these inhibitory metabolites from Streptomyces E1 using classical microbial genetics techniques such as gene knockouts and/or heterologous expression of genes.
Message To Sponsor
I would like to thank the Rose Hills foundation for sponsoring my project and allowing me to conduct research full time this summer. As a continuation of my senior honors thesis project, I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to learn more about this bacterial strain and its metabolic capabilities. I am very excited to learn more useful skills and techniques through my participation in SURF.