The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience
Congratulations to Dr. Annika Jagels, former postdoctoral research associate in the Loesgen Lab, and her co-authors for publishing a new paper in the Journal of Natural Products – “Metabolomics-Guided Discovery, Isolation, Structure Elucidation, and Bioactivity of Myropeptins C–E from Myrothecium inundatum".
Jagels et al. discovered new fungal lipopeptides with potent in vitro and in vivo toxicity. Using mass spectrometry-based metabolomics, these molecules were found after altering the culture conditions of the fungus Myrothecium inundatum. The complex molecular structures were defined using state of the art techniques, including spectra from UF's Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy Facility (AMRIS).
These lipopeptides exhibit potent, but unspecific toxicity against human pathogens, human cancer cells, and zebrafish by destabilizing cell membranes. Additionally, the gene cluster encoding for these new metabolites has been identified in the genome of Myrothecium inundatum.