Dr. Katharine Watts

Research Interests

1. Connecting natural products to biosynthetic pathways in soil bacteria
   1. Cloning and analysis of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters
   2. Expression of biosynthetic gene clusters in heterologous hosts
   3. Isolation and structure elucidation of pathway intermediates and products
   4. Elucidation of enzyme function in biosynthetic pathways
2. Microbial diversity and biosynthetic potential in environmental samples
   1. Isolation of unique microbes from environmental samples
   2. PCR screening of genomic DNA for biosynthetic genes
   3. Gene sequencing and analysis