Bacteria under nutrient stress shift in their metabolic activities to include the synthesis of essential amino acids, vitamins and other cofactors. Brown lab researchers are trying to understand the potential of nutrient biosynthesis as a new and tractable target in drug resistant pathogens. To this end, that Brown lab has been screening libraries of structurally diverse synthetic compounds and natural products to find inhibitors of bacterial growth in minimal media. Compounds and extracts active in primary screens are subject to the addition of an array of key metabolites and pools thereof to identify suppressors of growth inhibition and provide hypotheses for physiological, genetic and biochemical experiments to elaborate mechanism of action. Efforts in the Brown research group are also aimed at developing chemical and genomic platforms to understand the interaction of the nutrient biosynthesis apparatus with both bacterial and human physiology using systems approaches.