On May 21st, an academic report was delivered at the College of Food Science and Technology of HZAU by Yin Wenbin, a senior investigator at Chinese Academy of Sciences. The report, titled “Synthesis of Fungal Natural Product” was held in Room 504 of the Institute of Food Science and Technology.
Yin started his report with the question “why researches natural product”. He first illustrated the history of natural product, then revealed the significance of the research to the synthesis of fungal natural product in the perspective of the achievements and the connection between fungus and human. In response to the current conditions and bottlenecks, Yin stated the fact that 99% of hidden compounds remain uncovered makes it increasingly difficult to obtain compounds with new structure and bioactivity. Based on these obstacles, the Institute of Microbiology Chinese Academy of Science held the 7th WDCM Seminar on 2017 October 12th , signaling the start of the International Microbial Genome and Micro-biome Sequencing Project.
Yin mentioned about that glycosylation modification of natural products can effectively improve its drug properties. But compared with plants and bacteria, the research to fungal glycosyl transferase appear to be least. In the meantime, he compared the differences of glycosyltransferases among different species, and concluded that the main reason for the few researches on fungal glycosyltransferases is that the fungal glycosyltransferase has the lowest similarity and the research is the most difficult. Then he explained the epigenetic regulation and gene expression with experiments, and introduced the most important biological control fungi to agriculture-- paecilomyces lilacinus, then he revealed the characteristics of Lilac mimosa genome by sequencing the whole genome and comparing genomic analysis of two paecilomyces lilacinus. The experiment came to the conclusion that paecilomyces lilacinu not only has the nematicidal activity but the inhibitory activity to phytophthora infestans. The team also identified for the first-time gene clusters of biological synthesis of melanin in cell walls of enclophytic fungi and concluded that heterogeneous expression has unique advantage in analyzing complex or silent compounds.
At the end of his report, he summarized his fruitful work in his lab. After the report, the senior investigator communicated with students and teachers about the questions relevant to the report.