Jon Clardy
Harvard Medical School
Jon Clardy is the Hsien Wu and Daisy Yen Wu Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Before moving there in 2002, he was a member of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. He was educated at Yale University, where he received a B.S. in chemistry and Harvard University where he received a Ph.D. His research interests have always centered on small naturally occurring molecules, especially those with pronounced biological activity. His current research is roughly equally divided between finding new small molecules using biologically-driven assays and developing methods to find new small molecules from natural sources. The first approach has involved developmental assays for nematodes, choanoflagellates, and bacteria; and the latter has been focused on sequence-based searches, heterologous expression and various elicitors. Today’s talk will focus mostly on the first approach – biologically-driven discovery – but it will also illustrate the power of bacterial genome sequencing. In addition to his research, Dr. Clardy is a popular teacher, and his course, which is shared with David Liu, entitled Molecules of Life, is one of the most popular science courses in Harvard’s general education curriculum.