S67: Removing barriers to the expansive chemical diversity of fungi

Drug discovery programs are dependent on the quality of compounds entering into the initial screening process.  Fueling this pipeline with natural products has numerous benefits, but it is also fraught with challenges.  Our research group has worked to address several of these problems by developing new techniques, which aim to increase the chemical and species diversity of samples incorporated into microbial natural products libraries.  Several key features involving the integration of robotics and automation, unique collection strategies, and redefining dereplication methods are playing important roles enhancing the value of natural-products-based screening approaches.  In addition, we have developed procedures that expand the roles of citizen scientists in the discovery process and thereby enhance access to new microbial diversity.  Applying this consortium of techniques has increased sample throughput, provided access to new natural products, and increased the likelihood of success in our natural products drug discovery effort.