Sherman Lab News

LSI researchers  have determined how the final machine in a biological assembly line completes the production of an important group of antibiotics, opening the door the door to tinkering with the machinery to produce new antibiotics. 

A team of U-M researchers has successfully modified a naturally occurring chemical compound in the lab, resulting in advanced lead compounds with anti-HIV activity.

A team of researchers from the University of Michigan and University of Utah has developed a new method for optimizing the tools that nature uses to build chemical compounds.

Researchers have developed a method for altering one class of antibiotics, using microscopic organisms that produce these compounds naturally. The findings could lead to more efficient production of antibiotics that are effective against drug-resistant bacteria.

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon Rain Forest, microorganisms are thriving within a river so hot, it boils. U-M graduate student Rosa Vásquez iexploring the Boiling River’s ecosystem, searching for genetic clues that explain how these organisms have evolved to survive in their scalding surroundings.

An international team of researchers has decoded the complex process that fungi use to build an important class of bioactive compounds.

The LSI Cubed funding program is spurring innovative, trainee-led research projects, and already resulting in high-impact scientific findings.

Researchers have solved a nearly 50-year-old mystery of how fungi produce a large class of bioactive compounds, revealing a chemical reaction reaction that is nearly unprecedented in nature

LSI researchers are traveling more than 3,500 miles from Michigan to the Mayantuyacu Community in Peru in search of the organisms that can survive in a river so hot, it boils.

Four teams of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will soon launch their own cross-lab, interdisciplinary projects, with funding from the LSI Cubed program.

LSI researchers are part of a new, federally funded effort to understand and prevent toxic algal blooms that plague portions of the Great Lakes and impact freshwater sources around the world.

Three ground-breaking LSI projects are among the University of Michigan projects to be funded in the first round of investments from the Biosciences Initiative.

With funding from the U-M College of Engineering's Blue Sky Initiative, a team of researchers is setting out to streamline the process for developing the next generation of antimicrobials.

Research collaboration reveals how a mutation in the MUTYH protein prevents it from doing its job repairing damaged DNA — and our DNA can function like an electrical wire, conveying important signals.

How one type of enzyme allows a microorganism to produce molecules with a wide range of potentially beneficial activities — from fighting insects to killing fungi.

A round-up of media stories about LSI research and researchers from 2017.

Graduate student Amy Fraley recently joined faculty member David Sherman on his latest expedition in Cuba, where strict barriers have prevented access for nearly 60 years.

Postdoc Laura Mike, Ph.D., is targeting bacteria’s need to scavenge iron from its human host in order to survive.

Researchers have mapped the  complex chemistry involved in creating several types of bioactive compounds that are naturally produced inside bacteria. 

 

A round-up of media stories about LSI research and researchers from 2016.

David Sherman and his daughter traveled to Nepal in the search for microbes that produce beneficial molecules.

 A new class of anti-biofilm compounds derived from marine microorganisms that show promise against a drug-resistant bacterium commonly associated with hospital-acquired infections.

A team from the LSI, University of Illinois, Chicago, and University of Southern Denmark has identified a resistance mechanism against ketolides, a new type of antibiotics just entering widespread use.

For decades, scientists have known that ET-743, a compound extracted from the mangrove tunicate — a kind of sea squirt — can kill cancer cells. Until now, its precise origins were a mystery.

Eli Benchell Eisman, a post-doctoral research fellow working in the lab of David Sherman in the LSI and a STEM-Africa Seed Scholar, spent ten weeks in Ghana investigating plant-based traditional medicines in hopes of ultimately developing new drugs.