Antiprotozoal Natural Products from Endophytic Fungi Associated with Cacao and Coffee.

Background: Collectively, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease cause approximately 8 million cases and more than 40,000 deaths annually, mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. The current drugs used to treat these diseases have limitations and many undesirable side effects; hence, new drugs with better clinical profiles are needed. Fungal endophytes associated with plants are known to produce a wide array of bioactive secondary metabolites, including antiprotozoal compounds.

Genome Mining, Microbial Interactions, and Molecular Networking Reveals New Dibromoalterochromides from Strains of of Coiba National Park-Panama.

The marine bacterial genus is known for their ability to produce antimicrobial compounds. The metabolite-producing capacity of has been associated with strain pigmentation; however, the genomic basis of their antimicrobial capacity remains to be explained. In this study, we sequenced the whole genome of six strains (three pigmented and three non-pigmented), with the purpose of identifying biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) associated to compounds we detected via microbial interactions along through MS-based molecular networking.

Reproducible molecular networking of untargeted mass spectrometry data using GNPS.

Global Natural Product Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) is an interactive online small molecule-focused tandem mass spectrometry (MS) data curation and analysis infrastructure. It is intended to provide as much chemical insight as possible into an untargeted MS dataset and to connect this chemical insight to the user's underlying biological questions. This can be performed within one liquid chromatography (LC)-MS experiment or at the repository scale.

A comparison of inducible, ontogenetic, and interspecific sources of variation in the foliar metabolome in tropical trees.

Plant interactions with other organisms are mediated by chemistry, yet chemistry varies among conspecific and within individual plants. The foliar metabolome-the suite of small-molecule metabolites found in the leaf-changes during leaf ontogeny and is influenced by the signaling molecule jasmonic acid. Species differences in secondary metabolites are thought to play an important ecological role by limiting the host ranges of herbivores and pathogens, and hence facilitating competitive coexistence among plant species in species-rich plant communities such as tropical forests.

Viscosin-like lipopeptides from frog skin bacteria inhibit Aspergillus fumigatus and Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis detected by imaging mass spectrometry and molecular networking.

Amphibian populations worldwide have declined and in some cases become extinct due to chytridiomycosis, a pandemic disease caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis; however, some species have survived these fungal epidemics. Previous studies have suggested that the resistance of these species is due to the presence of cutaneous bacteria producing antifungal metabolites. As our understanding of these metabolites is still limited, we assessed the potential of such compounds against human-relevant fungi such as Aspergillus.

A protocol for high-throughput, untargeted forest community metabolomics using mass spectrometry molecular networks.

Premise Of The Study: We describe a field collection, sample processing, and ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) instrumental and bioinformatics method developed for untargeted metabolomics of plant tissue and suitable for molecular networking applications.

Methods And Results: A total of 613 leaf samples from 204 tree species was collected in the field and analyzed using UHPLC-MS/MS. Matching of molecular fragmentation spectra generated over 125,000 consensus spectra representing unique molecular structures, 26,410 of which were linked to at least one structurally similar compound.

Imaging mass spectrometry and MS/MS molecular networking reveals chemical interactions among cuticular bacteria and pathogenic fungi associated with fungus-growing ants.

The fungus-growing ant-microbe symbiosis is an ideal system to study chemistry-based microbial interactions due to the wealth of microbial interactions described, and the lack of information on the molecules involved therein. In this study, we employed a combination of MALDI imaging mass spectrometry (MALDI-IMS) and MS/MS molecular networking to study chemistry-based microbial interactions in this system. MALDI IMS was used to visualize the distribution of antimicrobials at the inhibition zone between bacteria associated to the ant Acromyrmex echinatior and the fungal pathogen Escovopsis sp.

Sources of variation in foliar secondary chemistry in a tropical forest tree community.

Specialist herbivores and pathogens could induce negative conspecific density dependence among their hosts and thereby contribute to the diversity of plant communities. A small number of hyperdiverse genera comprise a large portion of tree diversity in tropical forests. These closely related congeners are likely to share natural enemies.

Sharing and community curation of mass spectrometry data with Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking.

The potential of the diverse chemistries present in natural products (NP) for biotechnology and medicine remains untapped because NP databases are not searchable with raw data and the NP community has no way to share data other than in published papers. Although mass spectrometry (MS) techniques are well-suited to high-throughput characterization of NP, there is a pressing need for an infrastructure to enable sharing and curation of data. We present Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS; http://gnps.