Amir Alwali
Role: Fundraising
Email: aalwali@purdue.edu
Amir is mostly interested in find in new biosynthetic gene clusters that produce novel secondary metabolites via chemical induction. His first project in the Parkinson laboratory focuses on exploring the ability of antibiotics to induce production of natural products in phylogenetically diverse Streptomyces strains. In addition to discovering new antibiotics via chemical induction of biosynthetic gene clusters (project 1), he is extremely interested in the enzymes responsible for natural product biosynthesis. He is exploring the biosynthesis of nucleocidin by S. calvus for new enzymes that catalyze unique reactions. Nucleocidin has a fluorine atom attached to a quaternary carbon, which is not present in any other known natural product. Additionally, nucleocidin contains a primary sulfonamide, which is seen in many different compounds. However, the biosynthesis of such groups is still unknown. He has great interest in identifying the enzymes responsible for these transformations and exploring their mechanisms. Skills learned from both projects include various microbiology techniques, molecular biology (PCR), and metabolomics.