On this bonus episode of Natural Prodcast, it's the Self Promotion Episode! Dan chats with new-ish co host Jackie Winter, from the University of Utah, about her secondary metabolism research on weird microbes and bioactive compounds in the Great Salt Lake. Then, Dan talks (maybe way too much) about the Secondary Metabolism Collaboratory, or SMC, JGI's new data portal for natural product biosynthetic gene clusters. Episode transcript at jgi.doe.gov/natural-prodcast-episode-24-jackie-winter-and-smc ..read more

Natural Prodcast talks to Aaron Puri, from the University of Utah's Chemistry Department. We talked about carbon-fixing methylotrophs, quorum sensing, and inverse stable isotopic labeling ..read more

In this episode, Dan and Jackie talk to Alison Narayan, from the University of Michigan's Life Sciences Institute and Department of Chemistry. We talked broadly about the field of "biocatalysis", about her DNA synthesis project with the JGI to explore flavin monooxygenases, and what we all need to do in the future to figure out how to make predictions about the functionality and chemical capabilities of enzymes. Also, the Prodcast formally declares its position on candy corn.  ..read more

Natural Prodcast's interview with Elizabeth (Betsy) Parkinson, from Purdue, about bacterial signaling molecules and regulation of biosynthetic pathways, semisynthetic cyclic peptides, student mental health, and getting kids interested in microbiology.  ..read more

Natural Prodcast's interview with Vanderbilt Professor of Chemistry, Brian O Bachmann.  ..read more

This episode features our conversation with Roger Linington, from Simon Fraser University. Roger is a natural products chemist, and his research group works in metabolomics, drug discovery and screening, structure elucidation, and chemical biology. In recent years, his group has turned to some software development in order to build the tools that they need, and The Natural Product Atlas, a high-quality freely-available natural products structure database is one great result. In our conversation, we talk about NPAtlas, and the large international collaboration that produced it, what one can do ..read more

Natural Prodcast's Dan and Alison talk to Dr Cassandra Quave of Emory University, and author of The Plant Hunter ..read more

Natural Prodcast presents our interview with Professor Marcy Balunas, currently at the University of Connecticut's Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences but soon moving to the University of Michigan's Department of Microbiology and Immunology. In this episode, we discuss her work in in many areas of chemical exploration of natural products for bioactive compound discovery, understanding symbiosis, and a JGI project around ants and their fungus farms ..read more

This is Dan again, and you’re about to listen to the 3rd and final part of Natural Prodcast’s “Primer” episodes. This IS the third part, so if this is the first episode you’re checking out, you probably want to go back and listen to the first two parts so you understand what’s happened so far in the conversation between me and Alison. In the previous episodes we talked about the basic science and the history of the field of natural products or secondary metabolism, depending on which term you prefer. In this episode we’re going to finish up by talking about the modern, post-golden age history ..read more

This is our conversation with Eric Schmidt from the University of Utah. We talk about marine natural products from cone snails, sponges, tunicates, and about the chemistry of RiPPs.  ..read more