The LSI labs of David H. Sherman and Filipa Pereira have teamed up to boost bacterial production of a long-elusive compound, leading to a potential new treatment for drug-resistant malaria. Read more: research.umich.edu/research-sto...

Research from the Sherman and Pereira labs at the LSI was selected for @commschem.nature.com 2025 Editors' Highlights. "This work ... highlights how chemical biology can access new structural and pharmacological space from complex microbial metabolites.” Read more: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Communications Chemistry@commschem.nature.com · 8mo ago

Explore some of our favourite articles published in Communications Chemistry in 2025: www.nature.com/collections/... #ChemSky

Thrilled to share my recent work from the Pereira and Sherman Labs at @umlifesciences.bsky.social, out now in Communications Chemistry! We applied metabolic engineering, semi-synthesis, and biocatalysis to expand access to the antimalarial natural product premarineosin A. I suggest you check it out!

Metabolic engineering and late-stage functionalization expand the chemical space of the antimalarial premarineosin A - Communications Chemistry

Premarineosin A, a potent and selective antimalarial natural product, is a promising yet underexplored scaffold due to its limited availability and synthetic complexity. Here, the authors employ metab...

doi.org

Preprint alert!! 🎉 Ever struggle to activate a carrier protein? Led by Kenneth Hsu (Haverford '25), the Charkoudian Lab unearthed a novel PPTase from Dictyobacter vulcani 🌋 with remarkable promiscuity (in our case, better than Sfp & AcpS)! Grateful to be an alum of this phenomenal research team 💗

A Phosphopantetheinyl Transferase from Dictyobacter vulcani sp. W12 Expands the Combinatorial Biosynthetic Toolkit

The value of microbial natural product pathways extends beyond the chemicals they produce, as the enzymes they encode can be harnessed as biocatalysts. Microbial type II polyketide synthases (PKSs) ar...

biorxiv.org

New preprint 🥳 the first of my PhD! We applied metabolic engineering🦠, semi-synthesis👩‍🔬, and biocatalysis🧪 to access & improve the potency of the antimalarial natural product (-)-premarineosin A. I'm so lucky to work with such a creative, interdisciplinary, and fun team that made this all possible!

Advancing (-)-Premarineosin A as a Potent Antimalarial Therapeutic via Metabolic Engineering and Late-Stage Derivatization

Despite modern preventative and curative efforts, malaria has remained a major global health crisis. In 2023 alone, malaria was responsible for an estimated 263 million cases and 597,000 deaths. To co...

biorxiv.org

Are you working on natural products? We’ve just released version 4.0 of the MIBiG data standard and repository! It now includes 3059 biosynthetic gene clusters, thanks to the combined efforts of 288 expert contributors. A thread: (1/8) academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

MIBiG 4.0: advancing biosynthetic gene cluster curation through global collaboration

Abstract. Specialized or secondary metabolites are small molecules of biological origin, often showing potent biological activities with applications in ag

academic.oup.com