Chemical Biology Seminar: Professor Douglas Mitchell, Vanderbilt University
About the Seminar
Genomics-Enabled Discovery of New Molecules & Enzymes
Advances in genome sequencing and bioinformatics have catalyzed a resurgence of interest in natural products. Our principal focus has been on the ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs), which, despite being comprised of 50 known structural classes, share a simplified biosynthetic logic and require a minimal genomic footprint. This talk will describe the challenges we encountered and insights we gained from large-scale RiPP genome mining. New synthetic biology approaches to accessing new molecules and discovering new enzyme chemistry will be discussed, as well as ongoing work to define the boundaries of nature’s biosynthetic capabilities.
About the Speaker
Doug Mitchell hold the William K. Warren Sr. Chair in Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and is Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Chemical Biology. He holds a tenured appointment in the Department of Chemistry. Mitchell received a BS in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University, PhD in Chemistry from UC Berkeley (Michael Marletta), and completed postdoctoral work at UC San Diego (Jack Dixon). Mitchell joined the Univ. of Illinois faculty in 2009 with promotion to Associate Professor in 2015 and Professor in 2018. In 2025, Mitchell relocated to Vanderbilt University. In 2019, Mitchell co-founded Lassogen, Inc. (San Diego) which is developing lasso peptides as a new modality for treating cancer. Mitchell’s research centers on the chemical biology of natural product biosynthesis and derives insights from big data genomics, mechanistic enzymology, and synthetic biology. The Mitchell group currently consists of 20 full-time researchers and is funded by multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health and collaborative agreements with several companies.
Link to Doug Mitchell on google scholar citations