(2025)
Pleiotropic regulation of bacterial toxin production and Allee effect govern microbial predator–prey interactions.
ISME Commun 5(1),
ycaf031.
Accessing prehistoric antibacterial natural products
We apply new approaches to access the dimension of time, in addition to the space dimension, in natural product research to identify new bioactive compounds. For this purpose, we investigate prehistoric microbiomes (e.g. from dental calculus and skeletal remains) and microbiomes of traditionally living societies having little contact with pharmaceutically produced antibiotics. We pursue three strategies:
- Reconstitution of biosynthetic genes from prehistoric DNA in “modern” bacteria
- Identification of bacteria producing antibiotics in traditional microbiomes
- Investigation of the evolution of antibiotic resistance genes in order to learn more about the spread of (multi)resistant bacteria.
Staff
Laurenz Albert
Judith Boldt
Sabrina Even
James Fellows Yates
Alexander Gale
Rosa Herbst
Yusuke Hioki
Martin Klapper
Juliane Kratz
Maya Lobo
Raed Nachawati
Jannis Schubert
Akari Shinoda
Raphaela Stahl
Pierre Stallforth
Colin Strohbach
Harikumar Suma
Shuaibing Zhang
Publications
(2024)
Naturstoffe aus der Vergangenheit.
BIOspektrum 30,
744-746.
(Review)
(2024)
Accessing microbial natural products of the past.
Microlife 5,
uqae023.
(Review)
(2024)
Biofilms and exopolysaccharides in Pseudomonas aeruginosa: pathogenesis, immune evasion, and lung–brain signaling during pneumonia.
Signal Transduc Target Ther 9(1),
204.
(Review)
(2023)
Natural products from reconstructed bacterial genomes of the Middle and Upper paleolithic.
Science 380(6645),
619-624.
(2023)
Nonribosomal peptides protect Pseudomonas nunensis 4A2e from amoebal and nematodal predation.
Chem Sci 14(41),
11573-11581.
(2021)
The landscape of recombination events that create nonribosomal peptide diversity.
Mol Biol Evol 38(5),
2116-2130.
(2019)
Structure elucidation of the syringafactin lipopeptides provides insight in the evolution of nonribosomal peptide synthetases.
Chem Sci 10(48),
10979-10990.