LCMS-based secondary metabolomics as a tool to investigate marine bacterial natural products

The field of metabolomics has developed tools that are adaptable to secondary metabolites. We have recently shown that bacterial strains can be prioritized for drug discovery using principal component analysis (PCA) of LCMS data. LCMS-PCA is complementary to genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. Therefore, it can be used to assist with studies addressing a broad range of questions surrounding production of secondary metabolites including regulation and interspecies interactions. The application of LCMS-based metabolomics toward understanding the dynamics of how interspecies interactions between marine bacteria affect secondary metabolite production will be presented. Understanding the dynamics of microbial interactions represents a new forefront in systems biology and natural products discovery.