Brian O. Bachmann, Ph.D.
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Biosynthesis of bioactive secondary metabolites
Professor Bachmann is Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Biosynthetic Studies, a multidisciplinary group working on the construction and deconstruction of biosynthetic pathways and the discovery of their products. The broad goals of this group are to investigate how natural product biosynthetic enzymes evolve and to understand the design rules for their concatenation into efficient “total syntheses” of natural products. Can we apply these rules and direct the evolution of these pathways into new biosynthetic pathways of our own design?
The impacts of this work include providing new avenues for drug discovery by combinatorial biosynthesis and “green” cost-effective ways of producing high-value products and intermediates for pharmaceutical and life sciences. A list of his Vanderbilt publications can be found here.
Prior to arriving at Vanderbilt University, Professor Bachmann was Director of Chemistry at Ecopia Biosciences, a natural product-based drug discovery company in Montreal, Quebec. Professor Bachmann has served as a scientific consultant for multiple corporations and as a Board of Directors member. He holds several U.S. and international publications and patents.
Research Information
The primary mission of the Bachmann Lab is to apply knowledge of the design rules for secondary metabolism at the chemical, biochemical and genetic levels toward the biosynthesis of "non-natural" compounds of high value to biomedical research and the clinic. Key to this program in "synthetic biology" is the dissection of the mechanisms by which life makes bioactive molecules in vivo. The lab is organized according to three interlocking research areas: Biosynthesis, Synthetic Biology, and Discovery. These subgroups each have basic research and applied components and overlap with one another both thematically and methodologically.
