St. Louis – (June 12, 2017) Today scientists from St. Louis-based Intact Genomics, a world leader of research and services around large DNA fragment cloning and metagenomics related technologies; the University of Wisconsin – Madison; and Northwestern University, announced that their research to develop a new, scalable platform that harvests valuable lead compounds from fungi, using a technology known as Fungal Artificial Chromosomes with Metabolomic Scoring (FAC-MS) was published by the Nature Chemical Biology. For the article please click here.
The FAC-MS approach harnesses fungi to create powerful molecules honed through evolution by capturing large swaths of their DNA in a special system for robust production and identification of new molecules. Most notable, the company has also developed another disruptive technology of soil shuttle BAC-NGS (next generation sequencing) to capture 100-kb large DNA directly from soil and environmental uncultivable microbes for large-scale natural product discovery. The new 100-kb large DNA platforms will transform the process of discovering new bioactive molecules for application to numerous human diseases through the systematic discovery of new drug leads from the microbial world. For more information, please click here.
There are more press releases: “Fungal Genomic Breakthrough Unlocks a ‘Gold Rush’ of New Drug Discoveries” from Discovery Channel Seeker; “Intact Genomics, Collaborators Develop Workflow for Natural Products Discovery” from Genomeweb; and “Technology unlocks mold genomes for new drugs” from Phys.org.