Seminar w/ Dr. Courtney Aldrich

On Wednesday November 15th I attended the chemistry seminar of Dr. Aldrich. The title of the seminar was "Design of Antibiotics that Target Biotin Metabolism" and his goal was hopefully using it to treat TB. Dr. Aldrich is a professor at the University of Minnesota and is a researcher in the the department of medicinal chemistry. The first part of the seminar was discussing antibiotics; how they work, the development of them, and how in the past many have been overused. He later went on to talk about Tuberculosis and how many strains have become antibiotic resistant and pose a real threat to even the most developed countries, in terms of medical research. Up until this point I was following along quite nicely and comprehended a great amount on the subject matter. I myself am a Biology Major and am taking Microbiology this semester, so a lot of this tied in nicely. The second half of the seminar is where he lost me. He began to talk mechanisms and real chemistry. He made several jokes and the chemistry department (professors and grad students) laughed along, but I just wanted to return to the biology portion of the seminar. Based upon the graphs he showed his tests are showing promise, but much research is needed.