(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
Caroline Deckert
Sabrina Even
James Fellows Yates
Jasmin Frangenberg
Alexander Gale
Rosa Herbst
Yusuke Hioki
Anan Ibrahim
Marie Kaiser
Thorben Kirbach
Martin Klapper
Raed Nachawati
Tom Richtermeier
Akari Shinoda
Raphaela Stahl
Pierre Stallforth
Harikumar Suma
Ina Wasmuth
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)
MIBiG 4.0: Advancing biosynthetic gene cluster curation through global collaboration.
Nucleic Acids Res 53(D1),
D678-D690.
(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.