03/20/2025
The Hayward Genetics Center is proud to announce that a new family of bacterial viruses (phages) was recently named Ehrlichviridae in honor of Hayward Genetics Center’s Melanie Ehrlich and organic chemist/biochemist Kenneth Craig Ehrlich. As a postdoc, she began studies of the structure of Bacillus phage SP-15 DNA. She continued that research in collaboration with her husband nine years later when they found that the phage DNA has one of the strangest chemical compositions of any known DNA. The unusual base that replaces 62% of its T residues has a phosphoglucuronate that is attached to the 5-(4’,5’-dihydroxypentyl)uracil. This was, and still is, a novel finding of a natural DNA containing a uronic acid moiety and a phosphate that is not part of the phosphodiester backbone. The Ehrlichs more recently collaborated with Andrew Kropinski to sequence this bizarre DNA. Her research on DNA methylation began with the Ehrlichs’ study of a phage DNA (XP-12 DNA) that has all of its C residues methylated. This extensive C methylation results in a double helix that has a uniquely high stability (Tm). In human DNA, this same methylation is found but her research group discovered that it was in only a small, but developmentally and medically critical, portion of the C residues.
Congratulations to the Ehrlichs on this special honor!
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