My project DEFCOMANT - Establishing defined communities of Antarctic soil bacteria as potential sources of antimicrobials - has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101020356.

Natural products are an important part of pharmaceutical drug development and most antibacterial compounds have been derived from natural sources and environments. One of the most promosing environments in this world to find novel antimicrobial or bioactive compounds are extreme environments. It it more than obvious that spending the past 6 years of my research on Antarctic bioderversity must leave some"damage" - and so I decided to explore this area differently, and see if we can find novel chemical compounds and use them for our benefits. This doesn´t only mean, heeeey let´s explore Antarctic microbiomes and destroy them while doing so, but also to actually open our eyes in the time of global warning and think in a broader perspective - if this reagion can provide novel therapeutics, shouldn´t we be more dilligent in trying to protect and preserve it? 

Antarctica is not only cold, but incredibly cool as well! 

My project DEFCOMANT was be carried out at the University of Vienna, Department of Microbial Ecology of the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CMESS), with support of the Czech Antarctic Infrastructure (Masaryk University, Brno, ID: LM2015078). 

Please see the following objectives of my project to get an idea what I will try to achieve during my research:

The discovery of antibiotics is one of the greatest achievements in human medicine. However, the introduction and overuse of antibiotics led towards selection of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens that are one of the major concerns of modern medicine. Novel antibiotic classes are the most promising way to overcome current antibiotic resistance. To achieve this goal, antibacterial drug development is re-focused once again on natural products, especially by sourcing not-yet-explored or underexplored environments that represent a rich source of potentially bioactive microorganisms. One of such unique and intact environments is Antarctica with surprisingly high microbial biodiversity. The Antarctic soil microbiome has been proven as a rich reservoir of biosynthetically active bacteria with potential to produce novel antimicrobial molecules. However, simple exploration for antimicrobials among isolated microorganisms has its limitation, one of which is supressed expression of biosynthetic genes in laboratory conditions. The aim of the proposed project is to search for antimicrobial metabolites among unique Antarctic isolates and to streamline the process through a novel approach. Biosynthetic potential of isolates will be firstly characterized through genomics to identify the most promising strains. Afterwards, a novel tool, co-cultivation combined with high advanced omics methods will be implemented to design and grow well-defined microbial communities. Mutual microbial interactions in communities will stimulate metabolic activities of individual strains and expression of otherwise 'silent' genes resulting in production of various compounds, some of which may express antimicrobial activities. This project will result in establishment of the first defined Antarctic microbiotas and access their full biosynthetic potential to produce bioactive compounds, especially those active against the most critical multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens in human healthcare.

Useful links for more details:

EU: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101020356 

DOME (CMESS): https://www.microbial-ecology.net/ 

Czech Antarctic Research Programme: https://carp.sci.muni.cz/