UW-Madison Dept of Bacteriology
Michael G. Thomas
Associate Professor of Bacteriology
Alfred Toepfer Faculty Fellow
6155 Microbial Sciences Building
1550 Linden Drive
(608) 263-9075
thomas@bact.wisc.edu
Research Focus
Bacterial secondary metabolism has proven to be a rich source of natural products with medically and agriculturally relevant biological activities. Additionally, the enzymes employed by the producing organisms to generate these metabolites have proven to be a fascinating fusion of reactions that are typically seen in primary metabolism, with slight modifications to generate unusual enzymatic reactions. Thus, analysis of bacterial secondary metabolism offers the opportunity to study processes that have both basic and applied scientific interests. The overall goals of my research program are to discover, decipher, and harness bacterial secondary metabolism with these two scientific interests in mind.