Many microorganisms produce secondary metabolites that are believed to have critical roles in intra- and inter-species communication, competition for resources, or defense of a symbiotic partner. Despite the importance of these metabolites, it is estimated that only a tiny fraction of microbial secondary metabolites has been identified. By now, far more than 1,000 fungal genomes have been sequenced. The high abundance of biosynthetic gene clusters encoding for secondary metabolites compared to the small number of compounds seen produced under standard laboratory conditions give hope for future natural products discoveries.<sup> </sup>However two prominent challenges are that most fungi do not express their secondary metabolites under standard laboratory culture conditions, and there is no straightforward method for identifying novel secondary metabolites from complex extracts. Here we present the discovery of new fungal chemistry from gene activation experiments using co-cultivation, chemical perturbation, and deletion mutants.

Sex, drugs, and genetics: Gene activation strategies to access silent fungal metabolites

2019 Spring National Meeting

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