Novel fluorescent natural products for biotechnology

Fluorescent natural products are becoming of interest in the fields of medicine, biotechnology and environmental science. However, while nature is a souce of a vast number of bioactive compounds very few fluorescent probes have been discovered from natural products. This research is addressing the discovery of new fluorescent pigments and to expand its application into a new domain. A fungus, Epicoccum nigrum, was chosen for this project. E. nigrum is the sole member of the genus Epicoccum (family Pleosporaceae) and gets its name from its dark colour. The colour is produced by red, blue and purple pigments, one of them ( epicocconone) has been commercialised as a total protein stain for proteomics (Deep Purple; GE Healthcare), a fluorescent stain for live cell imaging (LavaCell; Fluorotechnics) and a protein quantification solution (Fluoroprofile; Sigma-Aldrich). This project aims to isolate new pigments from this fungus through the optimisation of growth conditions on agar plates and moving to medium scale fermentation, extraction, purification and structure elucidation of other pigments.