Daniel Udwary, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Pharmacognosy
Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences
danudwary@mail.uri.edu

Click here for information about the Natural Product Research Group

Research Interests

My group will pursue the identification and manipulation of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters for the purpose of discovering and modifying molecules useful in medicine. High-throughput genomic sequencing has led to new opportunities for drug discovery in the use of bioinformatics to allow the prediction of chemical structures using DNA sequence alone. My laboratory will employ knowledge of natural products, genomics, enzymology, ecology, and computational chemistry to develop new tools for analysis of biosynthetic systems in newly sequenced microbial genomes, and to catalog and compare the massive numbers of sequences publicly available. By increasing our knowledge of these systems, we aim to develop methodology to allow organic synthesis of complex drug-like molecules using biological systems.

Education

Postdoctoral research, University of California San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 2005-2007.

Postdoctoral research, University of Arizona, College of Pharmacy, 2003-2005.

Ph.D. in Bioorganic Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University, 2003.

M.A. in Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University, 1999.

B.S. in Chemistry, University at Albany, 1996.

Schultz AW, Oh DC, Carney JR, Williamson RT, Udwary DW, Jensen PR, Gould SJ, Fenical W, Moore BS. Biosynthesis and structures of cyclomarins and cyclomarazines, prenylated cyclic peptides of marine actinobacterial origin. J Am Chem Soc. 2008 Apr 2;130(13):4507-16.
 

Daniel W. Udwary, Lisa Zeigler, Ratnakar N. Asolkar, Vasanth Singan, Alla Lapidus, William Fenical, Paul Jensen, Bradley S. Moore. Genome sequencing reveals complex secondary metabolome in the marine actinomycete Salinispora tropica.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jun 19;104(25):10376-81.
 

Lijiang Song, Francisco Barona-Gomez, Christophe Corre, Longkuan Xhang, Daniel W. Udwary, Michael B. Austin, Joseph P. Noel, Bradley S. Moore and Gregory L. Challis. Type III Polyketide Synthase ?-Ketoacyl-ACP Starter Unit and Ethylmalonyl-CoA Extender Unit Selectivity Discovered by Streptomyces coelicolor Genome Mining. J Am Chem Soc. 2006 Nov 22;128(46):14754-14755
 

Crawford JM, Dancy BCR, Hill EA, Udwary DW, Townsend CA. Identification of a starter unit acyl-carrier protein transacylase domain in an iterative type I polyketide synthase. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 Nov 7;103(45):16728-33.
 

Austin MB, Izumikawa M, Bowman ME, Udwary DW, Ferrer JL, Moore B, Noel JP. Crystal structure of a bacterial type III polyketide synthase and enzymatic control of reactive polyketide intermediates. J. Biol Chem. 2004 Oct 22;279(43):45162-74
 

Udwary DW, Merski M, Townsend CA. A method for prediction of linker regions within large multi-functional proteins, and its application to a type I polyketide synthase. J. Mol. Biol., 2002, 323, 585-598.
 

Udwary DW, Casillas LK, Townsend CA. Synthesis of 11-Hydroxyl O-Methylsterigmatocystin and the role of a cytochrome P-450 in the final step of aflatoxin biosynthesis, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2002, 124, 5294-5303.