Benzenediol lactones or BDLs are a subclass of polyketides whose known representatives show widely varied biological activities, including stress tolerance and other roles related to plant health and productivity. Through a novel technique dubbed “comparative metaparvomics,” this project uses genome sequence information from the fungal genomes in the DOE JGI portal MycoCosm and interpreted by biosynthetic knowledge and sequence similarities to predict the capacity of multiple fungi to produce unknown members of a characteristic secondary metabolite family. The researchers plan to express all BDLSs using synthetic genes produced by the DOE JGI, and to isolate, structurally characterize, and evaluate the biological activities of the heterologously produced BDLs.
Proposer’s Name: Istvan Molnar