Novel RNA polymerase inhibitor found in soil extracts provides hope for future antibacterial drugs

Richard H Ebright talks to Rachel Coleby, Commissioning Editor: Ebright is at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ, USA), where he performs research on the structure, mechanism, and regulation of bacterial transcription and on antibacterial drug discovery targeting bacterial transcription. He has received research awards, including the Searle Scholar Award, the Walter J Johnson Prize, the Schering-Plough Award of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Waksman Award of the Theobold Smith Society, the MERIT Award of the National Institutes of Health, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Science. He has more than 130 publications in peer-reviewed journals and more than 30 issued and pending patents.