ERA-NET: Prostist Metabolome Screening

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2018

End date

12/31/2022

Budget

336,714 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Marine single-celled eukaryotes, called protists, have a large but underexploited reservoir of metabolic synthesis pathways and metabolites (biochemical compounds) with a biotechnological potential. Through evolution, protists have developed complex cells with properties, metabolites, metabolic synthesis pathways, and bioactivities different from those of bacteria. There are therefore great opportunities to discover different bioactivities compared to those previously identified in bacteria. In the PROMISE project, we use a range of various genomic analyses (omics methods) such as metabarcoding, genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics of protists from the sea. These methods tell us which protists are present in the samples, all the genes they have, which genes are expressed and which compounds they produce. The goal is to identify candidate compounds and their related metabolites and infer their bioactivity. In the PROMISE project, we also perform single-cell genomic analyses in protist cells isolated directly from marine samples and can thus recognise functional gene clusters and better understand how metabolic pathways occur in natural marine protist communities, how identified metabolic pathways function in nature and how they can be expressed and utilised for technological innovation that is relevant in medicine and biotechnology. The integrated assay procedure is supported by a range of biological tests to verify bioactivities by mass profiling and antibacterial activity screening. Analytical chemistry, including high-resolution mass spectroscopy and atomic magnetic resonance spectroscopy are used to elucidate the structure of compounds found in the bioactive fractions. This is linking molecular biological data to identified, relevant enzymes and other compounds, as well as their metabolism.