S131: A microbial diversity approach to drug discovery in Fiji

Linking secondary metabolite production to fine-scale phylogenetic diversity has revealed patterns of species-specific secondary metabolite production in marine actinomycetes.  The focus of this ICBG program is to explore microbial diversity in marine environments around Fiji in an effort to better understand actinomycete distributions and to discover new taxa, which are then studied as a source of novel secondary metabolites.  These efforts have led to the discovery of the new species Salinispora pacifia, which is broadly distributed in marine sediments.  This new species is characterized by relatively high levels of phylogenetic diversity and is the source of a variety of novel secondary metabolites including a new salinosporamide derivative the production of which is linked to a biosynthetic pathway that has evolved from a common ancestor shared with the sister taxon S. tropica.  Marine actinomycete strains derived from Fiji are yielding interesting new structures with biological activities relevant to the ICBG mission while genome sequencing of select strains has provided a mechanism to predict secondary metabolite novelty and methods to improve gene expression in orphan biosynthetic pathways.