Download Project description - Norwich Research Park

ELSA Project:
Mining Biodiversity within Marine sponges for Bioactive compounds.
PIs: Lisa Crossman (UEA, SequenceAnalysis.co.uk), Matt Hutchings
(UEA), Merv Bibb (JIC), Jonathan Kennedy (UCC), Alan Dobson (UCC)
ELSA pillar: Biodiversity. Funding round May 2013
Background and Aims:
The order Actinomycetales is a known source of novel bioactive compounds.
An original belief that these organisms were restricted to terrestrial niches was
recently discarded (Martinez et al., 2013). Marine sponges harbour a wealth
of bacteria, many of which produce secondary metabolites (Kennedy et al.,
2009). Previous estimates indicate that the marine environment contains as
many as 3.67 x 1030 microbes, representing a large untapped resource of
microbial diversity. A set of 14 strains isolated from marine sponges from the
group of Jonathan Kennedy and Alan Dobson (University of Cork, Ireland)
have been chosen for Illumina paired-end sequencing.
Examining the diversity of marine samples can indicate the potential for future
studies on bioactive secondary metabolites from a marine source. Data
mining approaches will result in genomic samples for a biodiversity survey.
This survey will lay the groundwork for future high throughput sequencing
studies in this area.
ELSA Project:
High levels of biodiversity existing within novel niches such as within sponges
may represent high diversity within Actinomycete genomes. It is an exciting
challenge to future-proof and upscale for the identification of potential gene
clusters of interest to provide sequencing data for downstream analysis.
Building on previously generated data for investigations on the biodiversity of
polyketide synthase (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthases (NRPS)
from Streptomyces species we aim to categorise the diversity of these genes.
A. Lissodendoryx diversichela
B. Sample collection via Robot arm