New Rotation for Adam

Well I've rotated into another lab for the second half of this semester. I am working with Dr. Eric Schmidt. The emphasis of his lab is discovering novel compounds from natural sources. Example: most of us have heard of the antibiotic penicillin. Did you know that penicillin was first found in a mold (Penicillium chrysogenum). A long time ago (relatively speaking) Alexander Fleming was growing bacteria on a petri plate and accidentally contaminated the plate with the mold. The bacteria are streaked in a zig-zag across the plate and the white patch is the penicillin mold. Notice how the bacteria can't grow around the white patch. So the professor I work for has been looking for other sources of naturally occurring compounds (not necessarily antibiotics, just potentially useful compounds). What I'm working on at the moment is trying to understand a compound that was discovered in a fungus (Fusarium heterosporum) called Equisetin. The compound looks a lot like the drug Lovastatin (an anti-cholesterol medication) but it's also very unique. My job is to see if I can make bacterial cells that will make this compound instead of the fungus which grows really slow. I'll keep you posted.