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Sarah’s research focuses on elucidating biochemical pathways in plants including those involved in the synthesis of the monoterpenes and the alkaloids, the enzymes involved and the evolution of these pathways.
Learning with Lowell
Welcome today to the learning with Lowell science podcast with your host Lowell Thompson. This podcast was created after I met the doctors that made the drug that would eventually save my life. At that time I was working 2 jobs, going to college full time, and was in and out of the ICU and ER. After I left college I worked 12-16 hour days to pay off my medical and college debt. Many of you work equally, if not longer hours, and don’t have time to current with latest news, develop mentors, and get advice. With this podcast you will see the new technology, advice on how to get into their fields and to learn more, and if I’m doing my job right you can tease out strategies, tactics, and more to use in your every day life. All while enjoying fun long form conversations.
This podcast was inspired by the Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson shows.
About Sarah O’Connor and Her Lab (Source)
“Sarah’s research focuses on elucidating biochemical pathways in plants including those involved in the synthesis of the monoterpenes and the alkaloids, the enzymes involved and the evolution of these pathways.
Sarah works on plants in the mint family (Lamiaceae) and uses modern sequencing and bioinformatics to characterise pathways and identify new genes. This work has led to the development of platforms which allow fast, inexpensive production of compounds.
- Monoterpene and alkaloid synthesis
- Evolution of biochemical pathways in plants
- Synthetic biology for compound production
Plants produce hundreds of thousands of complex metabolites called “natural products” that have many uses.
Anti-cancer agents such as vinblastine and taxol, the analgesic morphine, and the anti-malarials artemisinin and quinine are each natural products that are produced by a plant. Despite the importance of these compounds, it is unclear how many of these complicated molecules are made by the plant.
The O’Connor group elucidates and engineers the metabolic pathways that construct these compounds from simple building blocks.
An understanding of these pathways allows us to harness the wealth of compounds and biocatalysts that plants have provided.
Moreover, the group can also begin to speculate how and why plants evolved to produce some of these molecules. They take a multi-disciplinary approach to answering research questions, using plant molecular biology, enzymology and chemical strategies in their group.”
Awards (from Wiki)
- 2019 – Royal Society of Chemistry Perkin Prize for Organic Chemistry[4]
- 2018 – European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
- 2017 – Elected to European Molecular Biology Organization[5]
- 2013 – Wain Medal[6]
- 2011 – Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry
- 2011 – Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
Links
Sarah O’Connor’s John Innes Centre section
Sarah O’Connor’s Twitter page @OConnor_lab
Time Stamp Questions / Topics
- 2:15 How does her love of science influence her life outside of work?
- 4:15 How did she know Chemistry and Plant natural products was right for her?
- 5:35 What she advises undergraduates to do as soon as possible to test themselves?
- 7:45 What was a failure or set back that set up for a success in science for her?
- 10:45 What are her thoughts on reflection and introspection?
- 11:45 Neil Gaiman advice on writing and her advice on writing.
- 14:45 Explaining how to identify a compound for research and the different roles that came together to complete her research on a natural plant product.
- 18:45 She explains how we know what aspects of DNA do what they do to derive a product from specific sequences of DNA, and the origin of this system.
- 23:20 Benefits/ strengths weaknesses between plants v bacteria v fungi
- 25:45 She explains why we tend to shy away from animal biosynthesis and then goes into biosynthesis of morphine in mammals.
- 26:10 Examples of good movies that capture her work well ( I vote for the fountain with Hugh Jackman)
- 31:00 She explains what a person would need to learn to be effective at plant natural product biosynthesis.
- 33:45 She explains how the 15 year project, if done today would take about 5 years, and why that is possible.
- 35:50 Opportunities coming up in plant natural product biosynthesis in the next 5 or so years.
- 38:20 I Gem competitions and synth bio community.
- 40:35 Book recommendation.
- 40:50 Problem she is having that she would love help with.
- 44:45 Quick discussion on movie theories
- 45:10 Question that she wonders about that she doesn’t have the answer to.
- 46:45 A fun and inspire quote to leave us on.
Recommended other podcast Episodes to learn more
“London based bioinformatics service provider. When implemented successfully, bioinformatics can be used to identify new market opportunities and streamline existing R&D saving both valuable time and resources. Our goal is to provide easy and cost-effective access to this growing field for new to medium size biotech and bioscience based companies. ”
“Antiverse is building a world-first computational antibody drug discovery platform. We combine in-house lab expertise with state of the art machine learning to predict antibody-antigen binding and provide antibody drug candidates in one day.”
“George Church, professor at Harvard & MIT, co-author of 480 papers, 130 patent publications & the book “Regenesis”, developed methods used for the first genome sequence (1994) & million-fold cost reductions since (via NGS and nanopores), plus barcoding, DNA assembly from chips, genome editing, writing & recoding. He co-initiated the BRAIN Initiative (2011) & Genome Projects (1984, 2005) to provide & interpret the world’s only open-access personal precision medicine datasets.”
“No calories, has significant health benefits, is coming out within two years, 1500 times sweeter than sugar, and comes from a plant.”
Selected Publications
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Caputi L., Franke J., Farrow S., Chung K., Payne R. M. E., Nguyen T. D., Dang T. T., Soares Teto Carqueijeiro I., Koudounas K., Dugé de Bernonville T., Ameyaw B., Jones D. M., Vieira I. J. C., Courdavault V., O’Connor S. E. (2018)
Missing enzymes in the biosynthesis of the anticancer drug vinblastine in Madagascar periwinkle.
SciencePublisher’s version: 0036-8075
Key Terms/ Concepts
- plant molecular biology
- plant enzymology
- plant chemical strategies
- biocatalysts
- anti-malarials artemisinin and quinine
- analgesic morphine
- taxol
- vinblastine
- Anti-cancer agents
- natural products
- Synthetic biology for compound production
- Evolution of biochemical pathways in plants
- Reddit AMA
- Messenger RNA (mRNA)
- modern DNA sequencing
- bioinformatics
- John Innes Centre
- Monoterpene
- alkaloid synthesis
- biochemical pathways in plants
- Bioinformatics
- molecular synthesis
- plants
- flowers
- geranium rose
- chemistry laboratory
- science
- wet lab
- theoretical physical chemist
- medical plant
- Vinblastine
- Madagascar periwinkle
- Lee Iaccoca
- Neil Gaiman writing advice
- writing advice
- Chinese medicine
- folk medicine
- plant extract
- plant based drugs and medicine
- sequencing technology
- antibiotic synthesis
- microorganisms
- bacteria
- antibiotic biosynthesis
- genome mining
- operate genome
- annotate the genome
- co-expression analyse
- animal molecules
- plant v fungi v bacteria for natural products
- research on mammals producing morphine in brain
- neuronal cell culture
- morphine biosynthesis
- Dr Meinhart Zenk
- The fountain
- X-Files
- biochemist
- Analytical chemistry
- x-files science consultant (Anne Simon)
- Anne Simon
- Medicinal natural products by dewick
This show is similar to the Joe Rogan Experience, it is similar to the Tim Ferriss show, and it is similar to Neil Degrasse Tysons’s Startalk.