Microbial biodiscovery: Exploring venomous animal associated microbes as sources of new chemical diversity

Abstract

Microorganisms produce a large number of medically relevant small molecules through unique biosynthetic mechanisms. These small molecules have been widely used to develop drugs to treat a range of infectious diseases, cancers and other pathologies. In their natural environment microorganisms use these small molecules for signalling or defence. As microorganisms have adapted to different environments, they have greatly expanded their chemical profile and thus the investigation of microorganisms from new environments has often led to the discovery of novel chemistry.Microbes often exist in association with higher eukaryotic hosts and are therefore exposed to unique environments and thus produce unique chemistry. The host organism can benefit by utilising microbial metabolites for their own defence against infections, predators, and for chemical signalling. Interestingly, some venomous animals such as puffer fish and the blue ringed octopus utilise toxins produced by associated microbes to defend against predators. However this chemistry remains largely unexplored for the vast majority of venomous animals. In this study, we investigated metabolites from microbes associated with venomous animals including spiders, centipedes, cone snails, scorpions and wasps.We cultivated microbes from 15 venomous animals to produce a library of ~360 strains. The Chapter 1 Reviews the current status of drug discovery and symbiotic microbial strains involved in producing bioactive metabolites Poster.