Work in Progress - PKSII genes in desert soil bacteria

My overall work is trying to understand the hows and whys of genes in bacteria and archaea that produced complex molecules. These molecules are useful in humans as anti-cancer agents, anti-microbial agents, and antivirals.

To that end I scout out far flung places: caves, mountain tops, sun scorched spring mounds, desert cliff walls, and ruins looking for microbial communities.

I've worked up some methods of IDing compounds in microbial communities. The attached picture shows the structure of a few genes pulled out from bacteria in desert soils (454 data from Reddy et al). I hacked together a database from NCBI that lets me assign compounds and other properties to each type of PKS II gene that is known. Pretty neat. The questions marks in purple are unknown genes that make some neat chemicals we haven't seen before. This clues us into the fact I might want to go poking around in these soils to look for novel drugs.

I'll be releasing the database into github for folks to use in QIIME as they see fit.