Applied Microbiology: Open Access
Open Access
ISSN: 2471-9315
+44 1300 500008
ISSN: 2471-9315
+44 1300 500008
Philipp Heise
Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, Germany
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Appli Micro Open Access
Nicrophorus vespilloides is a burying beetle, which is common in Europe, Asia and Northern America. For its life cycle, it is crucial to find, preserve and bury a carrion of small mammals like rodents. The ability of burying complex nutrient rich carcasses into soil and the ability to prevent it from decaying but offering the carcass to the larvae attracted our interest. Our group carried out knowledge based chemical analysis of oral and anal secretions of N. vespilloides to get an overview about the released compounds. Culture independent studies already revealed the diversity of the microbiome and by using FISH the most dominant bacteria taxa were localized in the gut. Based on these data this work focusses on the gut microbiota of the beetle which can play an important role for the preservation of the carrion in order to find new bioactive compounds. Strain collections have been screened for new antibiotics for the last decades without any major outcome. The lack of new discoveries in the field of antibiotic drug research guides research to the knowledge based screening for bioactive compounds in so far underexplored sites and strains. This fact targets our Nicrophorus project by opening the insect gut microbiome to the world of natural product research.
Philipp Heise has studied Biology at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen. He has done his Master of Science in Molecular Microbiology and Biochemistry. He was a part of 3 months Scientific Exchange program at the University of Tromsø, Norway working in the Department of Medical Microbiology. In 2015, he started as a PhD student under the guidance of Professor Andreas Vilcinskas at the Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology working on the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides and its gut microbiota.