MARBLES at Joint MaNaPro-ECMNP 2023 in Granada
MARBLES was well represented at the Joint XIII European Congress on Marine Natural Products and XVII International Symposium on Marine Natural Products (MaNaPro-ECMNP) from 3-8 September 2023 in Granada, Spain.
The conference was chaired by MARBLES partner Fernando Reyes (MEDINA) and included a two-hour session dedicated to EU-funded marine natural product related projects that took place on Tuesday 5 September 2023. AIMS is a cluster of four research projects funded under the Call ‘FNR-11-2020: Prospecting aquatics and terrestrial natural biological resources for biologically active compounds.’ The four projects are Algae4IBD, InnCoCells, MARBLES and SECRETed (AIMS). Working together towards common goals, the cluster is exploring common challenges, activities and optimising synergies by means of working groups, workshops and meetings as well as data sharing and overall collaboration. As Algae4IBD, MARBLES and SECRETed are focussed on marine sources of natural products, they presented and discussed their common objectives and challenges during the Session.
Several of a our MARBLES researchers also presented their work at the conference including:
On Monday 4 September, as part of Session 1 Drug Discovery and Development, Marcel Jaspars (UNIABDN) organised and chaired the Session on Marine Policy entitled 'Digital Sequence Information (DSI) - What is it all about?'. The 75 minute panel discussion shed light on the new policy instruments that will significantly impact marine natural product research. The session particularly focused on the BBNJ Agreement and the DSI decision at the CBD, providing attendees with vauable insights into the latest policy developments for the two critical UN Treaties that will shape the future of marine natural product research.
On Tuesday 5 September, as part of Session 3 Chemical Ecology and Ecosystems Functioning, Detmer Sipkema (WUR) presented ‘The biosynthetic landscape of marine sponge microbiomes’. Detmer was followed by Lina Bayona (ULEI) presenting her research 'Awakening of BGCs in marine Streptomyces through ecology-inspired elicitors'.
On Wednesday 6 September, as part of Session 4 Natural Products Isolation and Structural Elucidation, Emmanuel Tope Oluwabusola (UNIABDN) presented his research 'Exploring natural product chemical diversity of marine microbial extracts using omics tools'. On Thursday 7 September, as part of Session 7 Metabolomics Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Applied to MNP Research, Mitja M. Zdouc (WUR) presented his research.
And last but not least some of the research poster presentations by MARBLES researchers:
