Professor of Molecular Microbiology
We are based at the University of East Anglia which is part of the Norwich Research Park in the UK. We study filamentous actinomycete bacteria that live in the soil and make lots of natural products that we call secondary metabolites. Most of the antibiotics and anticancer compounds used in human medicine are made from these secondary metabolites. We are trying to understand how and why the bacteria make these secondary metabolites and how plants and insects use them to defend themselves against disease. We are also discovering new antibiotics from bacteria that live in symbiosis with plants and insects and we hope that one day they might be used to combat drug resistant infections.
