Exploiting Marine ‘Omics’ Technologies for the Biodiscovery of Marine Natural Products

Dear Colleagues,

The marine environment is host to taxonomically diverse planktonic microorganisms and microbes closely associated in amensal or commensal relationships with higher organisms such as plants and animals. Genomic sequencing of marine-associated microbes and metagenomic sequencing of marine microbiomes have revealed the vast genetic potential for the production of putative bioactive marine natural products, both through sequence homology comparisons and through marine genetic ‘dark matter’. Combined ‘omics’ technologies offer the promise of identifying, characterizing and exploiting novel marine natural products with prospective applications in industrial, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical or cosmeceutical sectors and processes. This Special Issue plans to highlight multi-'omics' strategies being employed to characterize novel genes, enzymes or small-molecule metabolites from marine environments.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Genomics of marine microbes with a focus on potentially bioactive specialized/secondary metabolites;
• Metagenomics of marine microbial consortia;
• Metabolomics of bioactive marine microbes;
• Multi-‘omics’ approaches to realize the potential of cryptic specialized/secondary metabolism biosynthetic gene clusters.

Dr. Stephen A. Jackson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• ‘omics’
• genomics
• metagenomics
• metabolomics
• specialized/secondary metabolism biosynthetic gene clusters