Albebson Lim
Education: Ph.D. ’24, University of Utah
Cornell Faculty Mentor: Kelley Gallagher, Cornell CALS / Microbiology
External Adviser: Barrie Wilkinson, Isomerase Therapeutics
Themes: Advancing One Health
Harnessing Natural Soil Bacteria for Sustainable Pest Control
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global issue, and addressing this challenge has been a major focus of both food sustainability and One Health initiatives. The damage that AMR causes to health, the environment, animals, and plants is highly interrelated. Natural products are still the main source of antimicrobial agents, with a bacterial genus native to soil environments, Streptomyces, being the major producer. However, the use of this bacterium to control agricultural pests is presently underutilized. This project aims to discover new compounds from Streptomyces that could be used to combat resistant agricultural pathogens. I will take advantage of the large genomic database available for Streptomyces to prioritize strains that can provide a reliable source of novel compounds via bioinformatic prediction of regulatory mechanisms involved in compound production. I will next engineer our producing hosts to increase the production of bioactive metabolites. I will test these compounds against plant disease-causing bacteria and prioritize those that are safer and more potent. I will then elucidate the chemical structure of these compounds, which will provide us with critical information on how these metabolites can be modified to be more effective. Results from this project will directly impact the increase in food production by reducing losses caused by damage from antibiotic-resistant strains. Additionally, this could also serve as a framework and model that could be utilized for other bacterial sources that may produce bioactive compounds.