Zach Reitz

It's nice to be back at @UCSB! Today I start an exciting new postdoc with @mixotrophe and @proulxstephen2, working on mathematical models for siderophore production. Is this part of some quest to explore every corner of metallophore research? Stay tuned to find out!

We thought we knew the biosynthesis of desferrioxamines, but some key players were missing! In S. coelicolor, desferrioxamine B biosynthesis involves DesG and DesH, encoded in a second BGC. Studying the iron starvation regulatory network was the key!

We're hiring a postdoc to work on tree-ectomycorrhizal mutualisms! We are looking for someone interested in working empirically (experimentally or w/ field observations). While some project ideas are listed, we welcome all other ideas in this system, too! recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02772

antiSMASH > save as PDF > Illustrator did not go as expected. Feel like I'm being mocked.

Cool cool, my first time being plagiarized. To add insult to injury: I looked at the genome, and it doesn't even have the gene cluster 🤦

There are several natural product conference deadlines this month! Directing Biosynthesis (today!), Marine NP GRC/GRS, ICNPR 2024, and PSE Bioactive NPs. Don't miss out: tinyurl.com/NP-events

💊🧬 To all working on Natural Products 🧬💊 The #CBNP17 Symposium is taking place at @uniofwarwick on 4-5 July, back-to-back with #DBVII. We are accepting abstracts for talks and posters, particularly from ECRs. Find out more and register here warwick.ac.uk/naturalproducts

As Prof. Priyanga Amarasekare's heartbreaking saga at UCLA drags into another year, I've compiled a thread of articles written about the situation. My sardonic take: Some people didn't like to be accused of racism and decided to destroy her career over their hurt feelings. 1/21

Are you running antiSMASH across many genomes? Check out multiSMASH, my simple wrapper that streamlines comparative BGC analyses by parallelizing antiSMASH runs and tabulating the results. Runs BiG-SCAPE too! WIP, so feedback and bug reports appreciated. github.com/zreitz/multism…

"interestingly" and "importantly" drive me crazy, but "it should be noted" is worse

Thankful that I spent the last hours of 2023 with friends who ask me to explain silicon vs silicone and the saturation / rancidization of oils

Do any DNA clustering/dereplication tools work directly on .gbk files? Or do I have to write something to convert to fasta -> dereplicate -> map back?

Looks like an amazing summer school! "Microbial Specialised Metabolites: From Genomes to Biological Functions" jic.ac.uk/training-caree… (PS, obligatory plug for the list: tinyurl.com/NP-events)

So happy that I got to play a part in finding the first known lanthanophore, methylolanthanin! I'm most excited by the totally unexpected and unprecedented 4-hydroxybenzoate (in blue). We think this "worse" chelator may have evolved to get enough Ln while avoiding Fe toxicity.

I need to track down an E. coli mutant that's negative for all siderophore production, ideally paired with the enterobactin-only parent (i.e. no ybt/iuc/iro). Anyone have a freezer stock and willing to share? For logistic ease, looking for BSL-1 strains and a US source.