Development of a synthetic biology platform to discover novel ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides

Natural products are invaluable in drug discovery due to their chemical diversity and intricacy, which endows them with diverse mechanisms of action. The discovery of new natural products will benefit identifying new drug leads and advancing pharmaceutical research. Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) are a unique group of peptide natural products and are a new source of antimicrobials in the face of the antimicrobial resistance crisis. The methods for RiPPs discovery have undergone a revolution due to the explosion of available genomic data and the development of advanced bioinformatics tools. Recent bioinformatics studies have revealed a vast number of prokaryotic RiPP biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) predicted to encode new molecular scaffolds and potentially useful biological functions. However, the main challenge in accessing this vast number of uncharacterized RiPPs is the lack of tools to efficiently discover and characterize the BGCs that originate from diverse bacterial phyla. The overall goal of my Ph.D. research is to develop synthetic biology strategies to address the challenges associated with the discovery and characterization of RiPP BGCs for drug development and discovery.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Chemical Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Shi, Chengyou

Contributors dc:contributor

• Zhao, Huimin
• Rao, Christopher V.
• Kraft, Mary L.
• van der Donk, Wilfred A.

• Ripp
• Synthetic Biology

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Chengyou Shi

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127434

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F127434