Emiliania huxleyi is a single celled, marine phytoplankton with global distribution. As a key species for global biogeochemical cycling, a variety of strains have been amassed in various culture collections. Using a library consisting of 52 strains of E. huxleyi and an 'in house' enzyme screening program, we have assessed the functional biodiversity within this species of fundamental importance...

OBJECTIVE To identify and highlight the feasibility, challenges, and advantages of providing a cross-domain pipeline that can link relevant biodiversity information for phyto-therapeutic assessment. MATERIALS AND METHODS A public repository of clinical trials information (ClinicalTrials.gov) was explored to determine the state of plant-based interventions under investigation. RESULTS The re...

Fungi have consistently been one of the richest sources of natural products, with unprecedented chemical scaffolds and potent biological activities. During the last 20 years, pharmacognosy researchers in Mexico, in collaboration with mycologists, have discovered many novel bioactive fungi natural products and new fungal species. To date, more than 100 bioactive secondary metabolites from 20 fun...

Bioprospecting is the exploration of biological material for commercially valuable genetic and biochemical properties (Reid et al., 1993). This chapter will focus on the search for activities that could form the basis of new pharmaceuticals. Historically, most of the active ingredients in medicines have been natural products (Sneader, 1996), and natural products continue to form a productive so...

Komodo dragons are the largest living lizards and are the apex predators in their environs. They endure numerous strains of pathogenic bacteria in their saliva and recover from wounds inflicted by other dragons, reflecting the inherent robustness of their innate immune defense. We have employed a custom bioprospecting approach combining partial de novo peptide sequencing with transcriptome asse...