A Multi-Omics Characterization of the Natural Product Potential of Tropical Filamentous Marine Cyanobacteria.

Microbial natural products are important for the understanding of microbial interactions, chemical defense and communication, and have also served as an inspirational source for numerous pharmaceutical drugs. Tropical marine cyanobacteria have been highlighted as a great source of new natural products, however, few reports have appeared wherein a multi-omics approach has been used to study their natural products potential (i.e., reports are often focused on an individual natural product and its biosynthesis). This study focuses on describing the natural product genetic potential as well as the expressed natural product molecules in benthic tropical cyanobacteria. We collected from several sites around the world and sequenced the genomes of 24 tropical filamentous marine cyanobacteria. The informatics program antiSMASH was used to annotate the major classes of gene clusters. BiG-SCAPE phylum-wide analysis revealed the most promising strains for natural product discovery among these cyanobacteria. LCMS/MS-based metabolomics highlighted the most abundant molecules and molecular classes among 10 of these marine cyanobacterial samples. We observed that despite many genes encoding for peptidic natural products, peptides were not as abundant as lipids and lipopeptides in the chemical extracts. Our results highlight a number of highly interesting biosynthetic gene clusters for genome mining among these cyanobacterial samples.

Organic Winemaking and Its Subsets; Biodynamic, Natural, and Clean Wine in California.

From the ancient times, when wine/oenos was described as "Wine, the benevolent demon" by ancient Greek gastronomist and philosopher Athinaios in "Dipnosofistes", to modern days, the craft has seen significant fruition. The wine industry has evolved over time, and more so recently, to encompass many different subsets, one of which is the organic wine market. The organic wine industry has grown in recent years, especially in California. This rapid gain in interest has resulted in the evolution of several subsets, including biodynamic, natural, and clean wine. While biodynamic and natural wine, function more as a fulfillment of niche markets, clean wine may provide benefits for consumers that otherwise suffer from side effects of wine consumption. Low sulfite levels and lack of histamines in clean wine plausibly decrease headaches and adverse effects some consumers experience when drinking wine. An overview of the organic wine industry and its evolution with potential contributions to consumers, with an emphasis on clean wine, is discussed herein.