Opportunistic Sampling of Roadkill as an Entry Point to Accessing Natural Products Assembled by Bacteria Associated with Non-anthropoidal Mammalian Microbiomes.

Few secondary metabolites have been reported from mammalian microbiome bacteria despite the large numbers of diverse taxa that inhabit warm-blooded higher vertebrates. As a means to investigate natural products from these microorganisms, an opportunistic sampling protocol was developed, which focused on exploring bacteria isolated from roadkill mammals. This initiative was made possible through the establishment of a newly created discovery pipeline, which couples laser ablation electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (LAESIMS) with bioassay testing, to target biologically active metabolites from microbiome-associated bacteria.