UC San Diego

Marine natural products play an important role in modern pharmaceutical studies; hundreds of antibacterial, antifungal and antitumor agents have been discovered from marine organisms such as bacteria, sponges, tunicates, etc. Our lab is collaborating with Egyptian scholars at Helwan University in Cairo to explore novel antibiotics produced by marine-derived Streptomyces collected along the north Egyptian coast. In this thesis, a new chlorinated antibiotic that showed potent activities against Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is described. Analytical techniques including silica column chromatography, High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LCMS) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) were used to elucidate the structure of the new molecule.