Natural products produced by microorganisms are the main source of bioactive compounds that form the basis of many drugs, as well as crop protection agents. Traditionally, these compounds were discovered by making extracts out of samples from natural sources, and then isolating, purifying, and performing activity screenings. Thanks to the enormous progress in sequencing technology, microbial genome data is now readily available and can be used to complement the traditional approaches using genome mining technologies.

To assist researchers in their genome mining tasks, we have developed antiSMASH (https://antismash.secondarymetabolites.org) in collaboration with Marnix Medema’s group at Wageningen University, NL. Since its initial release in 2011, antiSMASH has become the most widely used tool for microbial genome mining and has grown an ecosystem of downstream tools and databases.

This talk will introduce the principles of genome mining and the antiSMASH ecosystem.

Blin,K., Shaw,S., Augustijn,H.E., Reitz,Z.L., Biermann,F., Alanjary,M., Fetter,A., Terlouw,B.R., Metcalf,W.W., Helfrich,E.J.N., et al. (2023) antiSMASH 7.0: new and improved predictions for detection, regulation, chemical structures and visualisation. Nucleic Acids Res., 51, W46–W50.
https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkad344

Coffee will be served prior to the lecture