Natural and unnatural roles of natural products

ORGN 1

Jon Clardy, jon_clardy@hms.harvard.edu, Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, 240 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
We know a lot more about the unnatural roles of natural products, especially the ways in which they might be useful in treating human diseases, than we know about their natural roles – why are they made by their producing organisms. This talk will address some illustrative example of this natural/unnatural tension in the general field of antibiotics and/or signaling molecules. These examples will include the pantocin family of antibiotics, antibiotics/signaling molecules from uncultured bacteria, and bacterial interactions as a way of turning on so-called cryptic pathways.