Anne-Marie Schmoltner
$868,617
Yi He
University of New Mexico
New Mexico
Biological Sciences (BIO)
This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The University of New Mexico (UNM) is a Hispanic-Serving Institution with 50% of its undergraduate student body identifying as Hispanic or Latino, and a majority-minority institution with 59% of its undergraduate student body identifying with an underrepresented group. This Partnership for Research and Education in Chemistry between UNM and the NSF Center for Genetically Encoded Materials (C-GEM) aims to increase the retention of minoritized undergraduate students in chemistry. It will focus on providing mentoring and research experiences to undergraduates to increase their sense of belonging in chemistry and strengthen their identity as chemists. These activities will prepare them for graduate school or careers in chemistry. The research will focus on engineering a relatively easily manipulable bacterium to produce chemical products of value, and using computational methods to study the machinery these bacteria use to produce these chemicals. Through these studies, this project endeavors to develop a route to alter and test the pathways used to make these value-added products, for potential long term implications for hybrid synthetic/biocatalytic routes to key molecular or materials targets. <br/> <br/>This project aims to develop two synergistic approaches to study and utilize biosynthetic machinery involved in the production of ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide (RiPP) class of natural products, with the long-term goal of generating large libraries of natural product-like compounds that can be screened for new and useful properties and activities. In objective 1, Bacillus subtilis, a Gram-positive bacterium for which wide array of genetic tools are available, will be developed as a flexible heterologous host for the production of RiPPs. In objective 2, a computational workflow utilizing two-stage multiscale molecular dynamics simulations to model the behavior of the RiPP precursor peptide in the active sites of the biosynthetic enzymes will be developed to gain a deeper understanding of how these enzymes function and to guide engineering efforts. This project will provide funding for six students annually to take part in C-GEMs summer undergraduate research program early in their undergraduate career, providing them with their first research experience in a collaborative and supportive environment, and strengthening their identity as scientists. It will also provide funding for four undergraduate students to perform research at UNM and present their research at scientific conferences focused on minoritized students. This project is partially supported by the Chemistry Division of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate and by the Genetic Mechanisms Cluster of the Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Division of the Biological Sciences Directorate.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.