Exploring the forest canopy metagenome for novel compounds Jessica F. Simbahan, PhD Institute of Biology, UP Diliman Forest Canopy Genomics Workshop, Makiling Botanic Gardens, UPLB 19 Nov 2016

More than 1030 microbial cells on Earth; 9 orders of magnitude greater than the number of known stars in the universe It is estimated that over 99% of microbes in many environments are uncultured Cultured prokaryotic representatives are overwhelmingly from just four phyla: Actinobacteria , Bacteroidetes , Firmicutes , and Proteobacteria access, characterize, and quantify untapped diversity of microbes discover novel genes, metabolic pathways, and important products with biotechnological, pharmaceutical, and medical relevance

Cow Rumen Metagenomics Hess and coworkers sequenced 286 gigabytes (gb) of cow rumen metagenomic DNA Illumina Gaiix And Hiseq 2000 Platforms Searched for carbohydrate active enzyme (CAZymes) sequences Searching for individual functional domains 27, 755 potential candidate genes from over 2.5 million predicted open reading frames (orfs) 24% of the genes were most similar to “hypothetical proteins” or “predicted proteins” in the NCBI database Were able to express 90 candidate proteins , of which 57% were enzymatically active against cellulosic substrates Assembled 15 uncultured microbial genomes, which were validated by complementary methods including single-cell genome sequencing Science. 2011 Jan 28;331(6016):463-7.

Forest Canopy Enzymes Antimicrobial compounds Compounds of agricultural importance Fungicidal and insecticidal functions Growth promotion Nitrogen fixation and nutrient availability Forest Canopy