Exploring the Biodiscovery Potential of Natural History Collections

Health and agriculture industries rely on a wide range of compounds for defence against pathogens and diseases. Valuable new compounds and enzymes with bio-engineering potential are often discovered from natural products, and our biological collections provide a unique opportunity for screening less-known organisms for valuable molecules.

This project will generate a pipeline for high-throughput screening of collection specimens for biodiscovery. We will explore two approaches: a small molecule and a genomic approach. Through the small molecule approach, we will characterise the chemical diversity in natural history collections and through the genomic approach we will establish the genetic basis for chemical production.

By uncovering the chemical diversity of our collections, we will contribute to the exploration of the biodiscovery potential of little-known organisms, the discovery of new bioactive molecules, and the pre-testing of potential applications.

Lead: Juanita Rodriguez
Collaborators: National Collections & Marine Infrastructure, Land & Water, University of Queensland