Humanity relies upon innovation in nature to solve societal challenges, and always has. Anticancer and antibiotic drugs are just some examples of the chemicals we have used or adapted from nature that have saved countless lives. Despite humanity’s strides in science in the last century or so, microorganisms have had billions of years of evolution to experiment in chemistry. Yet, just as nature is dominated by microorganisms we cannot grow in the lab, nature’s chemical diversity is also largely undiscovered. Advances in modern analytical tools and in computing are changing that situation. In this talk, we will explore the latest scientific tools to reveal groundbreaking insights into the chemical and genetic ingenuity of marine microorganisms and how we can discover new compounds that can become the foundation for a blue bioeconomy.
