Heterologous production and characterisation of lichen-derived secondary metabolites.

地衣形成真菌产生一系列独特的次生代谢物，具有多种生物活性。因此，这些天然产物具有生物技术和工业应用的潜力。然而，地衣生长速度极慢，阻碍了其生物技术开发。将采用两种策略来克服这个问题。第一种方法将侧重于地衣生长速率的调查。这将涉及对地衣材料进行紫外诱变，以创造更快生长的突变体。一旦产生这样的突变体，他们将在基因组水平上进行分析，以获得对真菌生物生长限制的潜在机制的见解。第二种方法侧重于地衣衍生代谢物的异源生产和次生代谢物的表征。利用生物信息学和合成生物学的方法，从地衣次生代谢物生物合成基因簇中鉴定基因并将其组装到表达质粒中。这些质粒将用于真菌异源表达平台菌株的转化。随后，将诱导代谢产物的产生，并测试化合物的生物活性。

Lichen-forming fungi produce a diverse range of unique secondary metabolites possessing a variety of biological activities. Therefore, these natural products have potential for biotechnological and industrial applications. However, the extremely slow growth rates associated with lichens hampers their biotechnological exploitation. Two strategies will be applied to overcome this problem. The first approach will focus on the investigation of the growth rate of lichens. This will involve UV mutagenesis of lichen material in order to create faster-growing mutants. Once such mutants have been generated they will be analysed at the genomic level to obtain insights on the underlying mechanism of growth restriction of the mycobiont. The second approach focuses on the heterologous production and characterisation of secondary metabolites of lichen-derived metabolites. By using bioinformatics and synthetic biology approaches, genes from lichen secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters will be identified and assembled in expression plasmids. These plasmids will be used for transformation of fungal heterologous expression platform strains. Subsequently, metabolite production will be induced and compounds will be tested for their biological activities.