Funding tool: Basic research projects
Project-ID: LS12-009
Project start: 01. November 2013
Project end: will follow
Runtime: 36 months / finished
Funding amount: € 250.000,00

Brief summary:

The emergence of antibiotic resistance in human and animal pathogens is an important world-wide problem but drugs effective against these resistant strains are scarce. Fungi are talented producers of natural compounds with potentially strong bioactive function. Well-known examples include antibiotics, cholesterol-lowering statins or anti-cancer drugs and anti-inflammatory substances. However, fungal genome analyses predict many more metabolites, but the production of most of these compounds is locked by chromatin-based gene silencing, a mechanism also called “epigenetic control”. In a former project we used an epigenetic remodelling approach and identified a novel antibiotic metabolite active against multiresistant bacteria from a rarely documented natural fungal isolate. In this project we plan to characterize this organism at the genomic and epigenomic level and aim at the identification of the genes responsible for this active metabolite production. In addition, we work towards the characterization of mode-of-action of this novel antibiotic substance. Results from this endeavour will provide new basic information on epigenetic control in fungal secondary metabolism and unravel the targets of a possibly new drug candidate.

Keywords:
Antibiotika, Bioaktive Stoffe, Epigenetik, Pilze, S.aureus