Elicitation of natural products biosynthesis from endophytic microorganisms' interactions

Abstract

Natural products are still important in the pursuit for novel bioactive compounds. Amongst the sources for those compounds are microorganisms that inhabit interior of vegetal tissues, named as endophytic microorganisms. Those microorganisms are interesting because of the continuous competition amongst different endophytic microorganisms inhabiting the same host, and the microbial competition against the defense mechanisms from the plant. Most important than the produced substances is the biological function of those compounds in the real environment, which in the majority of cases is not known. Endophytic fungi have been amply studied due to their highly chemical diversity, and recently interest in actinobacteria is increasing due to their potential for bioactive compounds production. Extensive laboratorial culturing of isolated endophytic microbial strains can diminish production of bioactive compounds probably due to silencing of genes involved in biosynthetic pathways. In order to reactivate those metabolic pathways, co-culture strategy emerged as a way to simulate microbial interactions under laboratory conditions. Co-culture has been proved to be a successful strategy for eliciting or increasing natural products biosynthesis. This internship proposal at Dorrestein Lab, as part of the PhD project (FAPESP#2012/21803-1), has as the main goal to acquire skills in recent imaging mass spectrometry techniques, such as MALDI-TOF and nanoDESI, as well as tools for analyzing data in order to apply the acquired knowledge for understanding the metabolic exchange amongst endophytic microorganisms interactions and helping for the discovery of novel natural products. (AU)