Presentations at the 2020 Gordon Research Conferences on Marine Natural Products

Tomorrow starts the 2020 edition of the Gordon Research Conferences on Marine Natural Products, “Discovery, Functional Development and Enabling Technologies of Marine Natural Products”. Organized by Kirk Gustafson (Chair) and Kerry McPhail (Vice-Chair), the meeting will have an exciting, bold and diverse presentations program. Topics include “Cryptic Microbial Metabolites”, “Marine Natural Products as Therapeutics and Molecular Probes”, “New Tools in the Structure Elucidation Tool Box”, “Secondary Metabolite Biosynthesis, Enzymology and Genomics”, “Enhanced Screening and Discovery Platforms for Natural Products”, “Development and Application of New Enabling Technologies”, “Mechanisms of Action and Molecular Targets”, “Functional and Ecological Roles of Natural Products” and “Future Directions in Marine Natural Products Discovery”.

Our group will be presenting four posters.

Dr. Camila M. Crnkovic, a former Post-Doctoral Researcher in the group and now assistant professor at the Universidade de São Paulo, will present a poster on the first results of her post-doctoral project, “Improving and diversifying the production and investigating the biosynthesis of phomactins by the cultured fungus Biatriospora sp. CBMAI 1333”.

Mirelle Takaki, a PhD student who will soon present her thesis, will present a poster titled “The use of molecular network and in-house platforms to investigate the metabolic differences between endophytic and phytopathogenic Colletotrichum fungi”. Her poster results from a collaboration of our group with Professor Roger Linington’s group at the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Mirelle completed a one year visiting studentship at Professor Linington’s group in 2019.

Laura P. Ióca, a PhD student who was a one year visiting student at Professor Alessandra Eustáquio’s group at the University of Illinois, Chicago, will present a poster entitled “A novel family of NRP-PK affect motility and biofilm formation in the marine bacterium Pseudovibrio brasiliensis”. Her poster results from a collaboration between Professors Alessandra Eustáquio, Laura Sánchez and Aleksej Krunic groups at UIC with our group in Brazil.

I will be presenting a poster by various students working in Brazil, including Vitor F. Freire (PhD student), Fernando B. Graça (undergraduate student), Dr. Ariane F. Bertonha, Darlon I. Bernardi (PhD student), Lucas R. Silva (undergraduate student), along with a large team of collaborators. The poster, titled “New Biologically Active Marine-Derived Peptides of Fungal and Animal Origin” will show a series of peptides and peptidic derivatives recently isolated in our group.

We are very much looking forward to attend and participate in the exciting forthcoming 2020 GRC-MNP!