Strain Development
Modified Products - Generation of novel "unnatural" natural products
Precursor feeding
The strategy aims for increase
the already enormous diversity of cyanobacterial natural products. It is based
on a change of the substrate availability for the biosynthetic machinery of a
selected natural product. By means of comparative DNA sequence analyses of
known and novel biosynthetic genes we identify suitable substrates and track their effect of feeding on the structural
diversity of a respective compound.
Combinatorial biosynthesis
Our biocombinatorial strategy allows for the optimization of biological activities of cyanobacterial natural products. Considering the evolutions of the biosynthetic genes, our strategy largely circumvents problems associated with conventional approaches of combinatorial biosyntheses. The already huge diversity of the different cyanobacterial natural product families serves as a basis for this optimization strategy.
Microbial Producer Strains
Following the identification of new lead structures or other valuable compounds, we finally generate recombinant microbial producer strains delivering high yields of the target compounds for large scale production.
