Bioactive Molecules
Living organisms produce a plethora of small biomolecules in support of their own development or interactions with their environment and other organisms. In the recent decades, the emergence and rapid development of 'omics' technologies, together with bioinformatics, have considerably increased the potential for exploring this surrounding biodiversity and searching for substances which can now be referred as bioactives and that have interesting properties, notably for enhancing human and animal wellness and health. By gathering a unique set of expertises, related to a wide range of both organisms and technologies, the InBioS research unit aims at developing a cutting-edge center for the discovery of small bioactive molecules originating from the secondary metabolism or processed biomass.
This objective is strongly built on three mutually supportive key-elements: a range of unique collections of organisms (soil bacteria, cyanobacteria, micro-algae, fungi, bryophytes, lichens, fungi and plants), a set of high-throughput screening procedures and equipments and big-data management and analysis capabilities.
The short-term objective of the InBioS-Bioactives axis is to consolidate a work-flow for bioactive identification and characterization:
- Micro-organism and plant collection management will be coordinated at the UR level to ensure the long term access to the resources. For each collection, the best way to ensure their maintenance, i.e. the conservation of biological samples, over the long term will be considered and implemented. A centralized electronic catalog of existing collections will be produced.
- A comprehensive list of methods, equipments and staff resources useful for bioactive extraction and characterization will be established and consolidated in such a way that any new organism under investigation at InBioS could be analyzed for bioactive production. A database of organisms and the bioactive molecules (or biological activities) identified by our screening pipeline or predicted by genome mining will be built to gather and store info about culture and production conditions, extraction methods, activity screening, etc...
