A major new collaboration between members of SYNBIOCHEM and the John Innes Centre, funded by BBRSC/EPSRC and Innovate UK, will explore SynBio approaches for the total biosynthesis of semi-synthetic antibiotics. Natural products are molecules typically produced by plants and microorganisms that have been widely exploited for pharmaceutical and other applications, but their use as therapeutic agents often requires further multi-step synthetic (chemical) transformation to produce the final optimised drug molecule. The project aims to develop new enzymes, pathways and riboswitch biosensors which can be introduced into host microorganisms to produce optimised drug molecules in a single step, enabling cheaper greener routes to essential medicines.
SYNBIOCHEM – Manchester Synthetic Biology Research Centre for Fine and Speciality Chemicals
