Discovery of New Antibiotics from Deep-Sea Microorganisms

There is an urgent need for new antibiotics to counter increasing resistance to antibiotics globally. No new structural class of antibiotic has been discovered for 30 years. Soil bacteria have given rise to over 70% of currently used antibiotics, but the main hurdle to further exploitation of this resource is repeated rediscovery of known compounds. Our approach is to access extreme environments such as deep ocean trenches to obtain bacterial and fungal species new to science to assess their ability to produce new compound classes capable of inhibiting bacterial growth. Our preliminary evidence shows that the discovery of new compounds from deep ocean sediments is much higher than from soil bacteria. The scholar will work as part of a larger directed effort in the research lab to discover novel compounds with antibiotic potential.