URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2017_Melissa-McCarthy

Seeking Therapeutics from a ‘Bucket of Muck’

written by Todd McLeish

Matthew Bertin assistant professor of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences

Structure of the new polyketide molecule trichophycin A with 2 dimensional NMR correlations detailed.

A

evolved about 3.5 billion years ago are among the most ancient organisms on Earth. “The compounds are thought not to be made for growth or reproduction but instead for defense, to ward off grazers or other competitors,” says Bertin, who joined the URI faculty a year ago. “And because marine cyanobacteria are so old, they’ve had a long time to have their genes mutated and duplicated and diverge, so they make all of these interesting molecules. They are prolific producers of secondary metabolites, or what we call natural products.” Bertin aims to isolate new molecules from blooms of cyanobacteria and test them for potential use as therapeutics against a wide range of diseases.

s a coral reef photographer for the state of Florida soon after graduating from college,

Matthew Bertin enjoyed scuba diving about 200 times each year around the Florida Keys, the Dry Tortugas and other areas of the state. Nearly every time he dove below the water’s surface, he became more and more intrigued by the chemical ecology of the reef systems and how marine microbes caused diseases that would stress and kill the corals. It inspired Bertin, now an assistant professor of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Rhode Island (URI), to study the toxins and other compounds produced by blooms of marine cyanobacteria – the mats of blue-green algae that

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