Schmidt Lab
Principal Investigator: Eric W Schmidt
Institution: University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Project Summary/Abstract Our overall research program aims to understand how chemical diversity arises in living organisms, and to apply that diversity to important biomedical problems. This MIRA project focuses on two related scientific areas: 1) a hypothesis-based approach to discovering new biosynthetic pathways and biomedically important compounds from marine animals; and 2) understanding diversity-generating biosynthesis and applying it to synthetic biology. The program synergizes with our applied biomedical research in drug discovery and development, which is funded elsewhere. Because so much remains to be learned about how nature produces diverse chemical scaffolds, our MIRA program is the key to providing innovative new materials and methods that underlie the biomedical applications. We address two overarching problems: 1) There is a greater variety of animal life in the sea than anywhere else, including millions of diverse animal species. Many marine animals live in highly competitive environments, and therefore they or their symbiotic bacteria synthesize small molecule chemical defenses, which have found value as FDA-approved therapeutics and lead compounds. They contain…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM148283-04: Symbiosis and Chemical Diversity Generation (2026)
- 5R01NS125305-05: Modulating single cell types in the sensory nervous system (2026)
- 5R01AI162943-05: Microbial Ecology-Guided Discovery of Antibacterial Drugs (2026)
- 5R01AI162943-04: Microbial Ecology-Guided Discovery of Antibacterial Drugs (2025)
- 5R01NS125305-04: Modulating single cell types in the sensory nervous system (2025)
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