EESS talk on "Marine microbiomes as treasure troves for natural products discovery"
Event details
| Date | 07.05.2024 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:15 |
| Speaker | Dr. Lucas Paoli, Institut Pasteur, ELISIR program |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract:
Microbes form complex communities that sustain Earth systems, underpin the health of animals and plants, and fuel biotechnological applications. These communities, or microbiomes, encompass a large discovery potential for bioactive natural products, which are a crucial source of therapeutic developments. However, in environmental microbiomes, the biosynthetic pathways producing these compounds (biosynthetic potential) have not been systematically assessed, owing to the lack of genomic resources. Here, we leveraged sequencing data collected during the Tara Oceans and Tara Pacific expeditions as well as publicly available metagenomes to generate global scale genomic resources for the open ocean and coral reef microbiomes. We found these microbiomes to encode a diverse and novel biosynthetic potential as well as host new candidate superproducer lineages, while highlighting the molecular resources that may be at stake under anthropogenic environmental changes and coral reef decline.
Biogaphy:
Lucas Paoli is an incoming ELISIR Scholar at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences, where he will lead a small research team to work at the interface of microbial immunity and ecology. He currently studies bacterial antiviral defenses as a postdoctoral fellow in the Lab of Dr. Aude Bernheim at the Pasteur Institute. Prior to that, he earned his PhD from ETH Zurich where he worked on the global ocean microbiome under the guidance of Prof. Shinichi Sunagawa.
Microbes form complex communities that sustain Earth systems, underpin the health of animals and plants, and fuel biotechnological applications. These communities, or microbiomes, encompass a large discovery potential for bioactive natural products, which are a crucial source of therapeutic developments. However, in environmental microbiomes, the biosynthetic pathways producing these compounds (biosynthetic potential) have not been systematically assessed, owing to the lack of genomic resources. Here, we leveraged sequencing data collected during the Tara Oceans and Tara Pacific expeditions as well as publicly available metagenomes to generate global scale genomic resources for the open ocean and coral reef microbiomes. We found these microbiomes to encode a diverse and novel biosynthetic potential as well as host new candidate superproducer lineages, while highlighting the molecular resources that may be at stake under anthropogenic environmental changes and coral reef decline.
Biogaphy:
Lucas Paoli is an incoming ELISIR Scholar at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences, where he will lead a small research team to work at the interface of microbial immunity and ecology. He currently studies bacterial antiviral defenses as a postdoctoral fellow in the Lab of Dr. Aude Bernheim at the Pasteur Institute. Prior to that, he earned his PhD from ETH Zurich where he worked on the global ocean microbiome under the guidance of Prof. Shinichi Sunagawa.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- EESS - IIE
Contact
- Prof. Wenyu Gu, MICROBE