NaToxAq in its integration phase
NaToxAq is now entering an integration phase with all our young investigators being busy with writing up papers and writing their Thesis. There is already about 20 published papers (see publication list) and much more to come – a world of interesting data providing new insight on natural toxin analysis, distribution, fate, removal, drinking water quality, and health effects.
Also we can show a great advances on both cyanotoxins and plant toxins with several review papers, that will generate an overview. Please note that the database on plant toxins is now with a parallel database on cyanotoxins (CyanoMetDB) with high value for future work on analysis and prioritization of cyanotoxin studies. Both databases are currently being extended and updates will be available soon. Comprehensive databases are necessary to correctly identify plant and cyanobacterial secondary metabolites and advance research on their abundance, persistence and toxicity in natural environments. The CyanoMetDB contains more than 2000 cyanobacterial secondary metabolites published in more than 750 articles between 1970 and March 2020. With the CyanoMetDB we more than doubled the total number of entries with complete literature metadata and structural composition (SMILES codes) compared to publicly available databases to this date. The availability of SMILES codes greatly facilitates the identification of structural motifs that are relevant for analytical approaches, research on biosynthetic pathways, bioactivity-guided analysis, or to facilitate predictive science and modeling efforts on cyanobacterial metabolites.
The Covid-19 situation has affected us to some degree and mainly with respect to conferences, meetings and secondments that have been cancelled.
We had to postpone our conference planned to take place in Brno the 5 – 6th of June, 2020. The conference is now transformed into an online conference which will be held the September 24 and 25 (link to conference webpage) – we hope to see many of you at the conference.
Participation will give you a highly qualified and novel update on results from the NaToxAq project and from many other researchers. You can register and see the program here: https://natoxaq.ku.dk/conference/.
