School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Diversity, inclusion, equity
We commit to fair, respectful, and equal interactions in the lab and in the classroom. We are a lab with many nationalities, ethnicities, thoughts, and beliefs and this diversity is important to us.
Our Science
A majority of antibiotics and drugs that we use in the clinic are derived or inspired from small organic molecules called Natural Products that are produced by living organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and plants. Natural Products are at the forefront of fighting the global epidemic of antibiotic resistant pathogens, and keeping the inventory of clinically applicable pharmaceuticals stocked up. Some Natural Products are also potent human toxins and pollutants, and we need to understand how these toxins are produced to minimize our and the environmental exposure to them.
We as biochemists ask some simple questions- how and why are Natural Products produced in Nature, what we can learn from Natural Product biosynthetic processes, and how we can exploit Nature's synthetic capabilities for interesting applications? Find out more about our Science, browse the Publications, and meet The Team.
We as biochemists ask some simple questions- how and why are Natural Products produced in Nature, what we can learn from Natural Product biosynthetic processes, and how we can exploit Nature's synthetic capabilities for interesting applications? Find out more about our Science, browse the Publications, and meet The Team.
Broadly, we are interested in questions involving (meta)genomics, biochemistry, structural and mechanistic enzymology, mass spectrometry, analytical chemistry, and how natural product chemistry dictates biology.
News
Vinayak Agarwal
Vinny got his PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with Satish Nair. He then moved to University of California, San Diego to work with Brad Moore. He was the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellow from 2014-2106, and the NIH K99 Pathway to Independence fellow from 2016-2017.
The lab has received external funding from the NIH (NIEHS and NIGMS), NSF (MPS-CHE and BIO-MCB), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Cottrell Scholar program. |