Baker Lab
Principal Investigator: Bill J Baker
Institution: University of South Florida (Tampa, FL)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Project Summary Natural products have a long history of use in biomedical studies of physiological pathways but have recently declined as a proportion of small molecules entering the clinic. Among the serious challenges of natural product discovery studies is ensuring a reliable supply of products for developmental studies, the re-isolation of known and well-studied chemotypes, and mitigating undesirable toxicities. Among solutions to these problems include biological and chemical synthetic strategies for abundant supply, seeking new unstudied or understudied biodiversity as sources of natural products to reduce the re-isolation of known chemotypes, and diversification of natural product analogs to produce new compounds with modulated toxicity and enhanced drug-like properties. This project executes a deep dive into the synthetic biology and genome engineering of an important natural product chemotype that displays a unique and promising bioactivity profile. Progress in this effort will not only address our knowledge gaps in polyketide biosynthetic pathways, but inform biomedical applications of small molecules with similar bioactivity profiles. Additional natural product chemotype…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R35GM164236-01: Securing and advancing natural products from remote ecosystems to inspire biomedical innovations (2026)
- 5R21AT012954-02: Natural Product Mining of Archived Corals (2026)
- 1R21AT012954-01A1: Natural Product Mining of Archived Corals (2025)
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