Faculty Profile
Cole Stevens
Assistant Professor of BioMolecular Sciences
Phone Number: (662)915-5730
Email: stevens@olemiss.edu
http://pharmacy.olemiss.edu/biomolecularsciences/team/dr-david-cole-stevens/
Key Words: Myxobacteria, Specialized metabolism and biosynthesis, Heterologous expression
Research Description: Our research questions and explores the utility provided by specialized metabolites to the producing organism. What do natural products do? The simplicity about this question belies its complexity. While the therapeutic activities of bacterial natural products have driven broad, activity-based discovery efforts, the benefits that the majority of secondary metabolites provide to producing bacteria have been obfuscated by their clinical applications and successes. Investigating the predatory capabilities of myxobacteria, we seek to determine the exchange of specialized metabolites amongst microbes during predation. Developing predator-prey pairings with ecologically relevant prey, we hope to learn how myxobacteria have evolved to combat bacterial behaviors pertinent to clinical concerns such as biofilm formation and persistence. TLDR: We study predatory bacteria and investigate how/why they make metabolites that kill prey bacteria
Honors Theses:
Gregory, Katherine C. (2019) Survey of Biosynthetic Gene Clusters from Sequenced Myxobacteria and Analysis of Potential Metabolic Diversity (full text)
Available Research Projects:
Antibiotic discovery from novel myxobacteria
Project Description: The best way to discovery novel (new) antibiotics is to start from a novel source. We need help isolating, sequencing, and investigating novel myxobacteria isolated from soils to determine if they produce new antibiotics. Joining this project will provide the opportunity to choose from any of the following research areas 1. isolating and cultivating environmental isolates of myxobacteria, 2. long-read genome sequencing, comparative genome analysis, and biosynthetic pathway bioinformatics, and 3. metabolomics, mass spectrometry, and antibiotic activity assays
Desired Student Qualifications: Interest in Chemistry/Microbiology
Project Timeline: 1-2 years (1 semester is no sufficient for this project)
Duties of Student Researcher: Laboratory research, data presentation, and thesis writing
Last Updated on 2022-02-22 10:27:19