I am a PhD student working on the novel natural product lugdunomycin, which is produced by Streptomyces sp. QL37. The goal of my PhD will be to improve the production of this molecule in order to obtain sufficient material to determine the functionality of the molecule as an antibiotic or anti-cancer agent. This goal will be reached by gaining insight in the transcriptional regulation of the biosynthetic gene cluster and the biosynthetic pathway involved in lugdunomycin production.
I am using techniques such as Streptomyces culturing, molecular cloning, heterologous expression, natural products extractions and the input of liquid chromatography- mass spectrometry (LC-MS) data to identify and quantify the production of lugdunomycin. This project is one of the projects of the Centre for Antimicrobial Research (CARES).