Heterologous production and characterisation of lichen-derived secondary metabolites.

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.