Dr Rainer Ebel from the Marine Biodiscovery Centre, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, will present the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology seminar with a talk entitled, "Dual induction of microbial secondary metabolites by fungal / bacterial co-cultivation".

Marine-derived microorganisms, in particular fungi, are promising sources of new bioactive metabolites. However, the frequent re-discovery of known compounds is a major problem. Many biosynthetic genes are not expressed in vitro thus limiting the chemical diversity of microbial compounds that can be obtained through fermentation.
On the other hand, the co-cultivation (also called mixed fermentation) of two or more different microorganisms helps to mimic the complex microbial natural communities. The competition during co-cultivation in most cases lead to an enhanced production of constitutively present compounds, or to an accumulation of cryptic compounds that are not detected in axenic cultures of the producing strain. Herein, we report the induction of newly detected fungal and bacterial metabolites by the mixed fermentation of the marine-derived fungal isolates and hyper-arid desert bacterial isolates