It has already proven to be a treasure chest for novel compounds against pathogenic fungi as well as shown leukemia cell and inhibiting activities (e.g. Vestola et al. 2014, Shishido et al. 2015, Humisto et al. 2016). Genome mining for natural product biosynthetic pathways accelerates the discovery of novel bioactive compounds and now complements traditional bioactivity-guided discovery (e.g. Vestola et al. 2014, Liu et al. 2014, Shishido et al. 2015). Genome mining of cyanobacteria demonstrate that these organisms encode large numbers of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters for which the end-products are unknown (Shih et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2014). We currently have number draft genomes sequenced from the interesting strains (harboring new bioactivities) from our collection.
This Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation funded project (2017-2020) We will 1) purify and identify the structures of the compounds showing anti-cancer (anti-leukemia) and antifungal activities 2) screen the rest of the culture collection for bioactivities (e.g. antifungal, anti-cancer activities) and compounds by mass spectrometry 3) by genome mining identify the biosynthesis of the most interesting compounds.
Key partner: Prof. Lars Herfindal, University of Bergen, Norway