High-throughput Small Molecules Discovery

The discovery that bacteria can “talk” through chemical signals (such as antibiotics, secondary metabolites, and quorum-sensing auto-inducers), both amongst themselves and with other species, has revolutionized the way we think about prokaryotic microorganisms. Additionally, molecular analysis of bacterial populations in various environments (ranging from soil, marine, and extreme environments to the human body) has shed light on how little of the Earth’s bacterial diversity we actually know. This immense bacterial diversity likely reflects a large range of bacterial chemical signals that might have relevant applications in medicine, as pesticides, and in our everyday life. My work currently focuses on developing novel techniques to study bacterial interspecies interactions that can be applied to a variety of microorganisms from various environments.