CeBiTec Colloquium: 2009/06/16
Prof. Dr. Rolf Müller
Department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken/Germany

2009/06/16, 17:15

CeBiTec building, room G2-104l

Myxobacterial Functional Genomics for the Production of Bioactive Natural Products

Abstract:

Myxobacteria belong to the few established microbial sources for natural products exhibiting various bioactivities. As they have been studied for almost 30 years by classical isolation and structural elucidation efforts, one may ask the question whether and how much chemical diversity is still to be found. We have initiated studies towards the isolation of novel myxobacterial isolates (now even including new families of myxobacteria) and combined the analysis of the resulting secondary metabolite spectra with bioinformatics guided evaluation of UPLC coupled high resolution mass spectrometry. These studies reveal an astonishing variety of novel compounds to be present. In parallel, genetic information is harvested and molecular biological tools are developed to express and modify biosynthetic pathways from myxobacteria in heterologous hosts. The genome information is also used to decipher regulatory mechanisms which can then be exploited to increase productivity. In addition, analysis of biosynthetic genes/proteins has been shown to pave the way to elucidate the stereochemistry of bioactive secondary metabolites.

Host: Prof. Dr. Alfred Pühler