Exploiting Marine ‘Omics’ Technologies for the Biodiscovery of Marine Natural Products

Dear Colleagues,

The marine environment is host to taxonomically diverse planktonic microorganisms and microbes closely associated in amensal or commensal relationships with higher organisms such as plants and animals. Genomic sequencing of marine-associated microbes and metagenomic sequencing of marine microbiomes have revealed the vast genetic potential for the production of putative bioactive marine natural products, both through sequence homology comparisons and through marine genetic ‘dark matter’. Combined ‘omics’ technologies offer the promise of identifying, characterizing and exploiting novel marine natural products with prospective applications in industrial, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical or cosmeceutical sectors and processes. This Special Issue plans to highlight multi-'omics' strategies being employed to characterize novel genes, enzymes or small-molecule metabolites from marine environments.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Genomics of marine microbes with a focus on potentially bioactive specialized/secondary metabolites;
• Metagenomics of marine microbial consortia;
• Metabolomics of bioactive marine microbes;
• Multi-‘omics’ approaches to realize the potential of cryptic specialized/secondary metabolism biosynthetic gene clusters.

Dr. Stephen A. Jackson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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