Objective
Anaerobic bacteria, a group of microorganisms that thrive in the absence of oxygen, have a significant impact on the quality of life on Earth. They play a crucial role in biotechnology and are essential components of the gut microbiota. As such, they are of tremendous importance for human, animal, and environmental health. On the other hand, certain anaerobes can be life-threatening pathogens.
In light of this, there is an urgent need for a deeper understanding of the specialized metabolites of anaerobes, which could function as chemical mediators, virulence factors, and antibiotics. Although genome analyses indicate that anaerobic bacteria hold an enormous potential for producing structurally unique compounds, biosynthetic gene clusters are typically downregulated or silent under laboratory conditions. Synthetic biology approaches to unearth these cryptic pathways have been hampered by the lack of universal activation strategies, the cumbersome genetic tractability of anaerobes, and the incompatibility of standard expression systems with the oxygen-sensitive biosynthetic enzymes.
The AnoxyGen project seeks to unearth the vast structural wealth of natural products from the anaerobic world and leverage their unique biosynthetic machinery using a highly versatile anaerobic expression platform. This ambitious initiative comprises four work packages aimed at refining synthetic biology tools, creating gain-of-function anaerobes, discovering novel drug candidates and virulence factors, and engineering biosynthetic pathways to create metabolic diversity.
By achieving these objectives, AnoxyGen will grant a comprehensive overview on specialized metabolites and biocatalysts of anaerobes, which have great translational value for medicine, ecology, and biotechnology. In addition to providing valuable methods and tools to the scientific community, this project has the potential to bring significant benefits for the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsantibiotics
- natural scienceschemical sciencescatalysisbiocatalysis
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
07745 Jena
Germany