Grant: Alliance Grants

This project is a new international collaboration between Prof. Elin Olafsdottier from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik Iceland and Prof. John Sorensen at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Sorensen was listed as a co-applicant on a project funded by RANNIS, the Iceland Research Granting Council. This NSERC application will strengthen this collaboration by supporting HQP in the Sorensen lab that will directly support the research descried in the RANNIS proposal. The project described in the RANNIS proposal aims to examine the prevalence of the two non-superimposable mirror image forms (enantiomers) of usnic acid in lichen fungi. The preliminary results collected by Dr. Olifsdottier and her group have demonstrated that certain species of lichen produce only the plus (+) enantiomer of usnic acid, while other species produce only the minus (-) enantiomer. However, the lichen species examined was limited to the island of Iceland by pandemic restrictions. This project will support sampling Canadian lichen species, including ones held in the herbarium at the University of Manitoba. This NSERC project further support the research project by examining at a biochemical level the basis for the production of two opposite mirror image forms of usnic acid. The genomic DNA from species that produce each enantiomer will be extracted and the translated amino sequence compared using bioinformatics methods. This will provide insights into the differences in the active site that lead to different enantiomers. This will then be biochemically confirmed by producing the enzymes coded for by the genes in bacteria using recently developed technology in the Sorensen lab. This will provide, for the first time, a complete understanding of how the two enantiomers are produced in lichen. This will have broad reaching impact in the area of natural products chemistry as most natural products are observed only as a single enantiomer. This will be of interest to the pharmaceutical industry as well as the boarder community of natural product chemists. This project will train 1 PDF and 3 undergraduate students in skills that are highly valued by employers.