Project information
Natural product diversification through multi-hybrid biosynthetic pathways

Bacteria have traditionally served as a source of bioactive compounds with therapeutic
potential, so-called natural products (NPs). However, bioactivity-guided NP screening often
leads to the rediscovery of already-known compounds while chemical syntheses are associated with enormous economic and environmental costs. This project will investigate yetuncharacterized biosynthetic pathways that combine elements of diverse biosynthetic
machineries in a unique way to produce novel molecules. Leveraging expertise in genome
mining, synthetic biology, and NP chemistry, this project aims to explore multi-hybrid
biosynthetic pathways in publicly available and de novo sequenced bacterial genomes. Further characterization of the identified multi-hybrid pathways will (i) infer their geographical, environmental, taxonomic, and phylogenetic distribution, ii) to understand their biosynthetic logic, particularly, how enzymes from different biosynthetic machineries cooperate to diversify natural compounds, and iii) to recover and test the antibacterial activity of such compounds.